A NEVADA man who was sick of paying rent decided to build his own luxury tiny home.
Tony Lopez, from Las Vegas, got the inspiration from his little sister’s treehouse.
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Tony first began looking for an alternative living space because he was sick of giving so much of his paycheck to a landlord.
“I was really frustrated I was spending $1,000 a month on my rent,” he revealed in a YouTube video.
“I thought, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’”
Inspiration struck when Tony visited his parents’ home and noticed his dad had built an impressive treehouse for his little sister.
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“I remember thinking I could literally live in this treehouse,” he said.
Soon after, he was inspired again when he saw shipping containers being used as luxury offices in a warehouse.
So Tony decided a shipping container would be the base for his tiny home.
He picked up a $3,900 shipping container on Craigslist.
Fortunately, this container was already half converted into a convention booth, so it had some metalwork and flooring.
Over the next nine months, Tony built it out into a luxury home.
He put away $250 a week toward materials, saving money by shopping on Facebook Marketplace and Offerup.
Tony also kept costs low by doing all the labor himself, with the exception of the electrical work.
“You don’t need a ton of construction experience,” he said. “I did it and I had very little experience at the time.”
He even built the furniture himself, including a Murphy bed, a high-top desk, and a retrofitted dresser.
Where to buy a tiny home
THE tiny home phenomenon found new heights as an alternative living solution for consumers concerned with ballooning homebuying costs and sustainability concerns.
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You can buy ‘tiny homes’ online in a few places, including:
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The finished result was a luxurious tiny house that was voted in the top five best container homes of 2018 by Curbed.
Tony has since gone on to create a tiny home construction company, Alternative Living Spaces, and has built 100 container and A-frame homes for customers.
But he is not the only one who has decided to create a home from a shipping container.
That’s what one young couple in Washington has done, creating an affordable lakeside cabin for less than $20,000.
And one man has stacked three shipping containers to create a cheap three-story house.