Foster Container Home

Just a couple of miles northwest of downtown Denver, you find the quaint neighborhood of Chaffee Park, and in it, one of the most striking container homes ever built. The Foster family lovingly constructed this magnificent shipping container house as both their personal residence and an occasional rental home as well.

This container house is primarily the brainchild of Regan Foster, a former firefighter and current builder who worked with a professional designer to come up with the expansive floorplan. The home was in many ways a do-it-yourself project, although there was certainly help along the way.

More recently, the couple has onto the home to increase their space. Specifically, they created a shipping container apartment above the detached garage, used primarily for Airbnb guests.

Let’s start with the main house. It’s built with nine 40 foot shipping containers in total. There are two banks of four shipping containers, with each bank having two parallel containers on each of two levels. In between the two banks is a large open space, and connecting the two banks in the back of the home is the ninth container.

Large roof trusses were set on top of the two container banks and span across the open central space to enclose it. This created the living room, with soaring 25 foot high ceilings and tons of light. The front of the living room has traditional windows plus a custom metal shipping container door that was converted into the front door. The back of the living room has a huge sliding glass door that opens to the backyard.

Opening the doors on both ends of this large, central space allow a breeze to blow through the home on nice days, forming a sort of breezeway that is reminiscent of a dogtrot home. But even with the doors closed, you’re still getting tons of light and views of the surrounding neighborhood and mountains beyond.

But the containers themselves are also used for functional spaces. In the bottom of the home, to the right of the entrance, a huge media room takes up the width of two containers and uses a curved ceiling with wood slats to give a unique texture. Elsewhere, there are two bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms downstairs as well.

And we can’t forget the kitchen, which is carved out of the side of one container, yet looks out into both the living space and the backyard. With a huge 14-foot long island topped with soapstone, it’s ready to prepare and serve meals for a large party or family event. There’s also some variety here two, with both light and dark cabinets in different locations, and even white quartz and copper countertops along the wall.

The home’s living room is framed on two sides by the custom staircase and catwalk. The treads of the stairs are wooden laminate while the structure is welded steel. It definitely meshes well with the container’s industrial-chic appearance as it leads you to the rooms on the second floor.

Upstairs, you’ll find a total of three bedrooms and two bathrooms, which is inclusive of the master suite. The different areas are separated by the massive living space, yet connected via the catwalk.

The master bedroom and bathroom are really worth of their own article. The end of one container is fitted with a sliding door that opens to a private balcony. The bed seems to hover over the floor thanks to a custom frame design. And a huge live edge wooden slab is used as a sliding barn door to the bathroom.

Throughout the home as lots of windows, including several clerestory windows in the main living space, that help to provide both light and passive heating during the colder months of Colorado. The majority of the walls in the home are white, which helps to reflect all this natural light and make the already large home feel even more open and inviting.

The furnishings of the home are worth discussing as well. It’s a mixture of family heirlooms, storebought pieces, and most interestingly, creations built by Regan himself. Much of his current work involves combining welded steel with salvaged wood, which you can see in features like the dining room table. There are also some interesting additions, like the colorful moped under the staircase.

Outside, the spirit of repurposing continues. The built-in outdoor kitchen with barbeque grill is surrounded by excess corrugated container walls that were removed while constructing the main house, with their logos and writing still intact. There are also some unique gabion chairs, welded steel cages filled with concrete debris then topped with wooden seating surfaces.

It’s clear that the Fosters had an eye for seeing items that others viewed as excess or even trash in a new light. This attitude not only helps to make their home unique and sustainable, it also saved them a lot of money.

Finally, we’ll discuss the newer shipping container apartment that the Fosters have added. While the detached garage was built at the same time as the rest of the house, it seems the main house still wasn’t quite enough. The entire property was designed with multi-family living in mind, which as time goes on may be extended family members, visiting friends, or Airbnb guests.

Leaving the original garage (now, primarily used as a home gym) intact meant adding external steel supports to the side of the garage. So the new apartment doesn’t so much sit on the garage as it hovers above it, supported on its ends by steel stilts.

Two containers were placed above the garage, separated by about a 10 foot wide open space that somewhat mirrors the design of the main home. The apartment is accessed via a custom metal staircase from the backyard, with a landing on a huge front porch that extends the width of the apartment.

Inside, the design is just as modern and inviting as the main home. A large living room and attached full kitchen serve as the main public spaces. Off to the side is a bathroom with two bedrooms, one of which has bunk beds for extra sleeping capacity.

The shipping container apartment is also furnished similarly to the family’s home just next door, with a variety of eclectic and handmade items that give the space a ton of character. While the space isn’t huge, it’s certainly livable and wouldn’t feel cramped for a couple or even a smaller family. And thanks to the backyard access and the scenic front porch, you don’t necessarily have to stay inside anyway.

In both their garage container home and main container home, the Fosters have showcased one of the most inspirational shipping container homes we’ve seen anywhere in the world. Thanks to a DIY drive and an eye for detail, they were able to create something that is unlike anything else in the best way possible. We hope you find some inspiration from their design and perhaps have the chance to visit them if you’re ever in Denver.