Pallets+ tin= storage building ?

After Hunter's grain bin was completed we looked around to find stacks and stacks of leftover pallets. We had picked up a 16 foot trailer full of them off of Craigslist for free when we couldn't find barn wood for Hunter's walls. Now we were stuck with the extras and not enough energy to cut them all apart to store the wood for later so...a few internet searches later and "why don't we build a shed out of them?".  We were in need of some storage after moving a ton of things out of the main house to sell it ( 2100 sq foot worth of household stuff does NOT fit well into 800 sq foot...and we already have furniture in the trailer for when we stay here). Chris had the wood to build the flooring and all the joists. He also had the metal studs to frame in the loft and the roof.

If you look in the top middle of this picture you can see some of the framing exposed.

( I didn't plan ahead and take pictures of it as we were building it.)

You can see the pallets that form the walls. We had to put 2x4 studs in between the pallets. The walls are 3 pallets high.

You can see the loft area for storage and how Chris made his own roof joists. The ladder int eh picture is 8 foot tall. After we are done using this for storage the plan is to have a game room in here.

Side view

The door came from a garage sale for $15. The windows came from an auction for $10 a piece. The metal pile came from another auction $200. We did have to buy a few boards here and there to make sure we had enough...total spent $400.

This is for the birds...and three cows

The few chicks that we have right now came from the local library that gave us them after hatching  them for the little kids to watch. The ducks we bought as replacements for the three we had that met their end one night by predator.

This is the chick cage for when they get big enough to be outside once they get feathers. The barrels are propped in there to help shield them from all the cold rain we have been getting lately. It was made from scrap material ( the tin leftover from Hunter's man cave, the boards from a fence we took down. The chicken wire we had. The door on the end came from a stack of 20 of them we got off of Craigslist for free.

AWWWWW...look at the sweet cows. They are jersey/angus/holstein crosses that we purchased last year and bottle feed. We, along with a friend of ours, got a deal from a dairy farm they were buy two calves get one free on Valentines Day. The cost ended up being $75 a calf. 

The cow house...the telephone poles were free( I talked the utility company into leaving several here when they were working on poles near by). The wood came from an auction of miscellaneous wood. The door came off of the trailer house when we replaced those doors. The tin on the roof was a free find too.

The feeder for the cows. Hunter and Chris came up with the design but Hunter and I built it. Okay, I helped,Hunter built it. All the wood in it came from an auction pile The tin was leftover pieces from adding onto the barn. The plastic barrel to catch the extra came from an auction for $3. The top has a pin that you pull and it tilts up to make it easier to put in the bail of hay.

The side view of the big chicken tractor. It has been moved down into the area where the cows stay because I am trying to grow a garden and the chickens like to scratch and eat all my seeds. They are in field fence down there so they have lots of area to roam but they can't get up to the garden. Once the garden is growing we can move the chicken tractor back up closer to the house. We were also told that keeping the chickens by hooved animals helps keep the predators away.( Raccoons and opossums) 

The frame of the chicken tractor is an old trampoline frame, the wood and chicken wire we bought. We probably have $100 in all of that because some of it we had. THe tin came from a pile we bought to fix the barn. We bought it used for $4 a sheet. ( Hannah painted it with leftover paint)

This is the front side that holds the nesting boxes. The top half  has the nesting boxes the bottom half is how they get in and out and where the food sits. The doors used also came from that pile of free doors. ( the cows broke the bottom door so it had to be replaced. They were rubbing their horns on it)

This is what it looks like open to the nesting boxes. It makes it easy to collect the eggs and clean it out.

One of the hens....

See, she likes it well enough...

The male turkey, the female is in the background. There are 6 hens,one rooster, one guinea, and three ducks that also share the space. 

The ducks. Actually four more are coming because a neighbor stopped by and asked if we wanted some he has an excess of them at his house. We end up getting about 3-4 eggs a day ( most from the chickens, but one from the duck and turkey every couple of days) Honestly, that seems to provide us with more than we use and we cook a lot!!

Lastly, we have three dogs( two outside, one in) and 5 "barn cats". As you can see our "barn" cats are really wild. (ha,ha...the girls have them named and they even come when called) 

An idea is born...

This is the sketch that Chris came up with after deciding that he would like to build a house out of two grain bins. The thought was that it would be more efficient because of the shape. Plus, it was just plain cool. Chris has been a carpenter for almost 20 years now and he has been able to work on some pretty unique jobs so curved walls have always appealed to him. Now I, on the other hand, was not convinced that this was going to be "cool" but I trust Chris...so here we go! The original plan was to set two 24 foot grain bins that were tall enough to put two stories in and build a living room in between them. That plan got modified a little over a year ago, my dad died unexpectedly and my disabled brother's health has taken a turn for the worse (he lives with my mom), so we have added an area for them to move in with us. This almost doubled the size of the project but at least we were still in the planning stages when it happened.
We were able to purchase the grain bins at an auction for $1200...the catch...they had to be taken apart and moved 30 miles. That was done in a few months with some help. Then once we got the grains bins here we were able to sell the equipment out of them and recoup our cost completely. So far we have all of the supplies to put up the exterior of the house. We have invested about $3500 more in collecting all the doors, windows, siding, exterior framing,and roofing. We were able to get most of the windows,doors, and framing wood at auctions. We purchased the roofing from a home improvement store on clearance because they had a builder who ordered it and then never paid for it or picked it up.

This is the plan for the first floor of the house.  The area that is 16x48 is the back of the house and was added for my mom and brother. The left side grain bin will be the kitchen and above it two bedrooms with a bath.The right side grain bin will be the "library"(because I have always wanted one) and above that the master bedroom and bath. There has been furniture added to the plan just to help visualize it but you would have to look at these pictures closely to see.

This is the plan for the upstairs. The grain bins will have two stories. The rest of the house is all one story. Also, we were having a very hard time finding do-it-yourself house plans that allowed you to create a round room. Therefore, we had to settle for an octagon.  So, that is the plan.
After figuring all of this out, Chris then decided to look into a tire footing for the foundation. ( more on that later).

Hunter's man cave..the final pictures

These ammo boxes serve as his dresser.

The lockers are his closet.

The door knob came from the hub cap of an old car.

The deer skin hangs on the ceiling.

A better picture of some of his collections.

This is a military vehicle tire and is at the top of the ceiling.

The red lights that are hanging were made by my dad.

This is a picture to the left when you walk in the door. The ladder going to the loft came off of another grain bin. Hunter has quite a collection of things . He loves to visit swap meets and antique shops.

This is the middle of the room. The Coca Cola cooler came from  my mom who got it from my uncle, for Hunter's birthday. What you can't see are all the bottles he has collected inside the cooler. There are a few furs that he got from Chris' dad for Christmas. Some old traps, some large 95mm shells, a WW2 gas mask and stretcher,old hub caps and a ton of other collectables. The rail by the mattress is a bumper found in a field.

This is the right side of the room. An old metal ammo box and two wooden ones serve as a dresser and the lockers are the rest of his closet. The lights are something my dad made for Hunter from an old lantern that he turned into a lamp.

Hunter put much time and effort into the finished project. I am sorry that the pictures are a bit dark...it is a "man cave" after all!

Hunter's man cave part 2

We lined the walls and ceiling with osb sheathing.  Did a wainscoat with corrugated tin .  We  took old pallets and tore them apart for the vertical boards above the tin. It didn't matter if all the boards were the same width it just was random.  

We also painted the osb behind the boards  black  where the boards didn't butt up tight to each other.

We added an old jeep tire at the top of peak  of the ceiling ,

Just put finishing touches on trimming it out.

The carpet tiles were recycled off of a job site also.
I work for a drywall company and was proud not to have added any drywall in  this project in fact it was my goal on it.- Chris

A bit of background...

So, we started with some of the early pictures but I think that we need to explain how it all started. Chris and I ( Noel) have been married for almost 20 years( gosh...writing that makes me feel REALLY old!). He is 40. I am 38. We have four kids. Lath is 18,he went to college early and will be getting his associates degree next month. Hunter is 17, he has been homeschooled for the last two years and is graduating this May. Hunter is our go too, he builds, repairs and takes care of animals for us. Hannah is 14, she has been homeschooled for the last two years and is finishing 9th grade. Abi is 10, she is our "true North" so to speak. She is our special needs child who has had some serious health issues in her life that has caused us to rethink and rebalance things around us. I have always been a stay at home mom with the theory that when the youngest went to school I would go back to work...well Abi changed that. So, I am home with her, why not the rest?
Thirteen years ago we bought a fixer-upper. A beautiful Victorian ( or so we thought from the onset), with more than a few things that needed fixed. After years of waiting until the time was right and the kids were old enough to tear into it while living in it, we found out we were having Abi. So things that got started got put on hold until she was old enough and well enough for us to dive back into it. Money was tight so we found new ways to redo the house but still make it new.

We sanded the whole house to keep the origanal woodwork and found windows and doors at a building material auction, The trim Chris made himself. The colors of the house came from 5 gallon buckets of mistinted paint because it was less than half the price of picking the same colors and having them mix them.

Chris came up with the curved ceiling. The shower unit came from my parents, the cabinets were on clearance, the sink came from an auction.

This kitchen came off of craigslist with all the appliances( $1200). The slate countertop was leftover from a project my parents did.

The flooring was on clearance and we bought it on a weekend when you got 20% off your entire purchase...so 800 sq feet cost us a couple hundred dollars.

We refinished the exsisting hardwood floors. The wood for the trim Chris bought at an auction and then made himself.

Chris came up with the box beam ceiling idea and I just think it is cool. He made the trim for it too.

 Now, that house is complete and we are ready to try our hand at what we have been thinking about the whole time, being self sufficient. Having only one income makes you think outside the box a bit. Well, Chris thinks outside the box more than most. His plan was to build the whole house for less than $30,000. That has changed a bit now, my mom and brother( who is disabled) will be moving in with us so we have made the house bigger. Now he is thinking more along the lines of less than $50,000 for a house with around 3000 square foot. The plan is to build the house in two grain bins( more on that in later posts) with an area inbetween and an area behind them. We will have radiant heat in concrete floors with a wood boiler. We also plan on having a wood stove in the middle of the house for heat. Some sort of solar or wind generation for some of our power. We have already owned the property since 2010 and it is paid for in full. We have planted a huge garden and have chickens, pigs and cows ( again I will go more into all that too). We started to fix up the trailer the first year we owned the property so that we would have somewhere to stay while we worked on it, after we sell our exsisting house. While we worked on the trailer we would stay in our fifth wheel camper. The trailer is not that great but bigger than a fifth wheel. It is 14x60 with two bedrooms and one bath. We put windows and doors in it from auctions and garage sales. We reused leftover material from the house remodel. The bathroom had to be redone and we got a shower unit for it for $10 on clearance because it was missing the hardware. That is when I called the manufacturer and they sent me the missing hardware for free. The bedrooms were recarpeted with remnants and the living room is carpet squares out of an office building that were going to be thrown away. The kitchen flooring is hardwood that was leftover from a friends remodel project and they were going to throw it away anyway. We did have to redo all of the plumbing in the trailer due to busted pipes from no heat. We spent a grand total of $500 on everything in the redo. ( but that doesn't count in against the building of the house ) We are moving a bit slow in the building process because we are trying to still sell our house. It has been on the market for 10 months with only one offer so the major building won't start until that expense is gone. We don't want to have too much debt so it has been slow going but we are hopeful the house will sell soon and our plans will be in full swing. We have accumulated much of what we need to start with and I will get to all of that soon! ~ Noel

Hunter's man cave, the beginning

 We put in a door and a window into a 14 foot diameter grain bin. They were both recycled. A whopping $5  dollars between the both of them.

 We took metal studs (recycled from a temporary wall from a jobsite)  and furred out the exterior walls and added a loft for sleeping.

We added the electrical. The biggest cost. 

This is a picture of the framing of the ceiling after adding the closed cell spray insulation.   We added about 2-3  inches of insulation giving it an R value of about 18.  We didn't have any cost in the insulation as it was left over from a job and was some spray experience for a new spray tech (my brother and Scott)

Insulated the concrete slab and put down sub-floor. The subfloor material was stuff that I had stored for a couple of years.  Leftovers from other projects.   We nailed a 5/4 treated board to the concrete and put styrofoam in between them. The put 3/4" plywood over the top.