Intellectual Tiny Home

The Intellectual Tiny Home is a container house meant to cater to a person with higher-end tastes. Despite its small size, it has some smart, luxurious features that a certain type of owner appreciates and is willing to pay for. But regardless of your feelings about the individual choices made in building and outfitting this shipping container home, there are insights to be gained.

The home is built inside of a used 40-foot high-cube container, for a gross-floor area of 320 square feet (ignoring the losses from the thickness of the walls). There are also a few square feet lost on the end of the container with the original steel doors, which cover up a utility closet and small storage space.

When you look at the exterior of the home, two things readily stand out. First is the cedarwood accent pieces affixed to the container itself. Supposedly, they are meant as potential attachment points for shelves, a table, etc. As they are, they simply provide a bit of texture to the appearance with no functional role.

The second exterior item you’ll notice is the two brightly colored french doors with built-in smart locks. French doors are often used on container homes to give the benefits of both doors (entry) and windows (light and views), but it’s less common to see two full sets of these doors in a single container build.

Entering either set of doors places you in the living room section of the container, which contrasts the white walls and ceiling with a warmer bamboo flooring. Here’s there’s a couple of chairs placed near a fixed shoulder-height window on the opposite wall. In between the two sets of french doors is a built-in fireplace, which is another rarity in a container home.

Don’t worry though, it’s not a wood or even gas fireplace but a ceramic electric resistance heater styled to look somewhat like a fireplace. Above and around the fireplace are trim work and tile meant to evoke a traditional fireplace surround and mantel. There’s also an inside cove for a TV or piece of artwork, in this case, a world map.

On one end of the container is the bedroom area, though using the word ‘room’ is giving it some extra credit. In reality, the area where the queen bed sits is fully open to the rest of the home save for the shielding provided by the head-height freestanding wardrobe closet. It’s essentially a 6 or 7 feet high wall that spans across about half the container’s width and provides a tiny bit of seclusion for the bed itself.

Moving the other direction is the kitchen and bathroom. The kitchen is essentially contained against the back wall of the container, save for the full-size refrigerator which rests against the front wall. There are several nice touches in the kitchen, like the 10-foot long butcher block countertop and the modern stainless steel sink. The fixtures and appliances are all matching stainless steel as well and include a euro-style drawer-sized dishwasher, a convection microwave oven, and an induction cooktop.

Finally, you’ll notice that the cabinet pulls and even the countertop backsplash are all stainless steel as well. The cabinetry itself is sleek and modern, including upper cabinets with translucent glass doors that are rear-lit. There’s also nice under-cabinet LED lighting and soft-close hinges for that upscale touch.

In between the kitchen cabinets and the refrigerator on the other side is a sliding barn door that allows passage into the bathroom. You have to take a step up to enter, presumably as a way to handle the drain and waste plumbing without having to cut into any of the metal floor joists below the container.

In the bathroom is a full-size shower with white subway tile and a contrasting color shower floor tile. The floor in the remaining part of the bathroom is an earth tone tile, and the cabinets match those in the kitchen. Above the cabinets is a white vessel sink and another stainless steel fixture to match the one in the kitchen. Below the bathroom counter is a combination clothes washer and dryer that provides double duty in half the space.

As you can tell from some of the pictures, the home was designed to be livable in colder climates as well. The builder used spray foam insulation throughout the home: two inches in the walls, four inches in the floors, and six inches in the ceiling.

While two people could theoretically live here full-time, the home’s design and furnishings are probably better suited for a guest house or short-term rental. Still, the now-defunct builder (Roostspace) and designer did a good job with the execution of this tiny container home, given the size constraints they had for the project and the goal of creating a more luxurious finish-out.

The Intellectual Tiny Home is shown above as being located in Longmont, Colorado, but that’s simply the last known location. The home was actually built there but purposefully designed to be sold and moved, so its current whereabouts are unknown (let us know if you’ve seen it for rent, etc.).

From what we can tell, the home was available for sale for a variety of prices including $33k, $54k, and even $62k in 2016 and 2017. We’re not sure what it eventually sold for, but perhaps the builder had higher expectations than the market would support and had to lower the price before buyers were found.

Still, based on the higher-end appliances and high-quality materials, this was always going to be a container home that was priced above a more middle-of-the-road model of the same size. If for whatever reason, you’re interested in staying small but going big on what’s inside, this container home is a decent example of what you could achieve.