Oregon City Container Home Three

Drive a few miles south of the Oregon/Washington border, past the city of Portland, and you end up in Oregon City. Unless you’re from the area, it’s probably not a city you’ve heard of until now. But there’s something special hiding in an average neighborhood here.

Thanks to some flexible zoning rules that allowed an empty lot to be split three ways, this quiet city corner is home to three small shipping container homes adjacent to each other. While they all have a similar overall aesthetic, each has a unique design.

The home at 295 Warner Street is our focus here, and this home uses a T-shaped floorplan made from one 40-foot container and two 20-foot containers. It’s a design that gives the wide spaces most home buyers prefer while also having some separation of different areas of the house.

Yes, it’s a small house at less than 1000 square feet. But it has a lot of open space, natural light, and modern amenities that make it quite livable. The home has two bedrooms and one bathroom, plus a small closet with washer and dryer hookups.

Both bedrooms have built-in wardrobe cabinets instead of closets, giving a good amount of storage without taking up much square footage. And everything in the home has an elevated finish, from the Ikea cabinets to the stainless steel appliances. As the saying goes, it may be small, but it is mighty.

In addition to the T-configuration, you’ll also notice a couple of bump-out areas, where the walls of the container were cut and moved outward a few feet. These bump-outs add additional space to the home without requiring another container and requisite foundation, almost like permanent versions of the slide-outs you see on some RVs.

Finally, check out the small shed in the backyard made from extra container wall cutouts. It looks great! And if you want more info on the other container homes next door, check out Oregon City Container Home One and Oregon City Container Home Two.