KAN House New Orleans

The KAN House is a shipping container home that was a labor of love for a young New Orleans couple. After his parents lost his childhood home in Hurricane Katrina, Kicker Kalozdi knew he wanted to buy a home that was strong and resilient but still had the character he was looking for. When he couldn’t find anything he liked, he stumbled across container construction and the rest is history.

Kicker and his wife Anne started by buying a lot in the Irish Channel neighborhood of New Orleans, just a block from the mighty Mississippi River. The area was full of older shotgun houses, but he was able to find a vacant lot that didn’t require a tear-down and cumbersome permissions given the historic neighborhood status.

Unfortunately, due to the architecture of the area, the lots are very rectangular. In fact, this lot was only 25 feet wide, which makes for a pretty narrow house! Luckily, containers are long and narrow too, so it was actually a great application.

The home’s seven containers are arranged across three levels. The first level has four containers, the second level has two containers, and the third level has one container. All the containers are 40-foot long high-cube models that were well-used, and all the stacking is done directly on top of the layers below, corner to corner.

However, despite what may sound like a relatively tame stacking orientation with no cantilevers, the home’s design is quite a bit more complex. The first 20 feet or so of the home is a two-container high space with an almost 18-foot ceiling. Building it required removing the ceilings from the ground floor containers and the floors from the second-floor containers. With all of these modifications, some structural reinforcement was required to make all of it work.

Thanks to its three levels, the home towers over most other buildings in the area. That gives it the benefit of having a view of downtown New Orleans to the north and the Mississippi River to the south.

However, the majority of the home’s area is on the ground floor. There you’ll find the CMU block garage and courtyard entrance from the street level. Then there’s the living room, kitchen, bedroom, and hall bathroom, plus a master bedroom with ensuite bath.

The second floor holds Kicker’s lofted office space looking down over the living room below, plus an additional bedroom and bathroom. It also has access to the large roof deck at the rear of the house. The single container on the third level is a flex space and activity room, which has its own adjacent rooftop deck as well.

Because the home has seven 40 foot containers, one might initially think it has 2240 square feet (7 times 320 SF per container). However, that double-height area in the living room reduces the size down to about 2000 square feet because roughly the first half of the second-floor containers were cut open to make the high ceiling area.

On the inside of this creative container home, there are a ton of little touches that brighten and warm what might otherwise be a spartan interior. Take the vertical accent wall behind the TV for instance. Kicker used reclaimed wood from a barn out of town to panel this wall from floor to ceiling behind the TV, providing a different color and texture that accentuates the room.

A few feet away is the two-story bookshelf with a sliding ladder. Here Kicker and Anne display meaningful items from their lives that tell a visual story of what makes them unique individuals. 

Looking down to the floor, you see the original dense-grain plywood that came with the containers. After a light sanding, they topped the floors with an epoxy coating to give a durable finish that furthers the industrial feel of the space.

In the kitchen, you’ll find durable concrete countertops that match those of the bathrooms. And there’s also a live-edge cedar slab table in the kitchen that serves triple-duty as a dining table, bar, and additional counter space. Toward the back of the kitchen is one of the original container doors, painted in a bold orange to catch your eye and accentuated with magnets the couple has collected during their travels.

Kicker’s office upstairs has tons of natural sunlight from all the clerestory windows, to the point he rarely even needs to turn on the lights. And with the airy feel and distant views, he finds that he has more inspiration and energy for working from home.

In good weather months, it’s easy to imagine how much fun could be had with friends and family on the two-level roof decks to the rear of the house. This feature greatly increases the useful area of the house, even if it’s not an enclosed, temperature-controlled space.

But if the family needs to stay indoors, they are well taken care of. They used ample closed-cell spray foam to insulate the walls, plus several split-HVAC units to keep everything comfortable. Kicker finds that his utility bills are very reasonable with the insulation and climate-control systems working together.

Getting the home built was certainly no picnic. After committing to building a home, Kicker realized that a turn-key contractor would likely take around 30% of the project cost as profit. Despite having no construction experience, he felt like he and Anna could take on the project management themselves to keep their cost more affordable.

Though they hired out much of the work to sub-contractors including engineers, crane operators, metal fabricators, and more, they were highly involved in all phases of the build. After the project, Kicker said, “We weren’t building a house, we were building a relationship. and the house kind of happened on the side.” Truly a beautiful statement about stress-testing their relationship and coming out stronger on the other side.

Kicker started thinking about the design of the home in the Fall of 2016, while most of the construction took place in 2017 and finally finished in 2018. While he and his wife both have full-time jobs, Kicker’s role in a family business gave him additional flexibility to be on-site during the week.

The home’s construction was truly a team effort from various stakeholders. They needed city involvement to get the approvals to build what was obviously a nontraditional structure for the neighborhood. And despite almost being derailed by one pesky neighbor, they eventually were able to move forward.

In fact, much of the community was excited by the project and eager to see investment in the area. This buy-in was crucial when Kicker needed to use an adjacent property for the crane placement, or occasionally inconvenience neighbors with trucks, heavy equipment, and construction noise.

When it was finally finished, Kicker and Anne were truly proud of what they’d accomplished. Living their everyday lives, they’re surrounded by reminders of the tiny decisions and problems that needed solving around the house, and it speaks as a testament to their drive and ingenuity.

While Kicker says that he thinks the cost of his container house was roughly equivalent to what we would have been for a traditionally constructed home with three stories, he really appreciates the durability and strength of his home given his family’s experience with a hurricane.