The next generation of recycled homes

 Our second oldest son, Hunter, was one of the reasons that we choose to build a house in a grain bin. There was a grain bin on the property when we bought it and he turned it into his room. It only makes sense that when Hunter moved out he would buy a place and reuse materials to rehab it. Hunter works for a company that delivers big roll off dumpsters and is able to find a lot of stuff that other people consider trash. We also used some of the stuff left over from building our own house or from auctions. Hunter was able to buy a 3 bedroom 2 bath house and we took most of it down to the studs. We replaced the windows in it. We bought them at an auction for $5 a piece. The first picture is the master bedroom and bath. We gutted the bathroom and rearranged some of the fixtures. It had a shower,garden tub and sink and now has a sink and shower. The barn wood on the wall came form some left over from our house. The tin also was leftover from our house. Hunter bought the carpet. The shower we had leftover. The sink came out of the dumpster at his work.

A camshaft out of a motor. It came from work too. It is his towel rack by the shower

The wood behind the toilet came out of the dumpster at work. It was old fence boards. the flooring was leftover from our house.

The sink came out of the dumpster. The mirror Hunter made himself. The cabinet came out of the dining room of the house. Most of the paint came out of the dumpster at work (a 5 gallon bucket) or on clearance for $9 a gallon.

A barn door that Hunter made out of barn wood we had. It leads to his bathroom.

 The living room. we did have to buy a new door and it cost $200,

The kitchen cabinets Hunter has been refacing with pallets that he got from work. The sink and faucet came out of the dumpster at work,

 These cabinets are in the dining room. The license plates were leftover fromour house and we had to pick up more at antique stores,

The living room is a lot of leftover barn wood and tin. The coca cola cooler came from my mom and Hunter stores his movies in it. The hubcaps came form the dumpster or swap meets.

This was a great find out of the dumpster at Hunter's work.

The decorations mostly came from the dumpster or auctions. The fish and boar's teeth were Hunter's great grandfathers.

This really cool wooden box came out of the dumpster at work. Hunter is using it to hold his shoes.

These are vent covers that Hunter made out of stuff that was laying around.

This mailbox Hunter made out of parts he got out of the dumpster at work. He even got the mailbox out of the dumpster. So the whole thing was free.

This is at our house. It is the railing that goes upstairs to our bedroom. Chris and Hunter collected the tools at auctions and garage sales. Chris welded all of it together.

Around the top edge of our front porch Chris built a ledge and placed glass insulators around it. We put lights under each one. They came from auctions. Usually a few dollars for a bucket of them.

Well, that is all I have to update for now. We are working on building a shop but the weather is turning cold so we will see how far we get on that. It may have to wait until Spring.

The last room...

 The last room to be finished is the master bedroom. We took several months off because our second son bought a place and we were helping him remodel it before he moved in. Someday I will post pictures of what he has done too because he helped to think up alot of the stuff we did in our house. The ceiling took forever BUT I think it was worth it!

This little detail is old tin that we clear coated. it was in a pile that we bought and that pile has been used throughout the house.

the doorways to the master bath and the two closets

we decided to use more of the beadboard that we used on the ceiling as the baseboard/

We ended up putting a piece of trim to cap it and then painting it all white. We already had the beadboard and we already had the trim pieces.

These beautiful solid pecan doors came from an auction. The same auction that we bought a 16 foot trailer full of trim from. The doors were in a stack of 8 doors. we paid $10 for the stack.

This tin has been used a couple of places in the house but we still had some left. I hated to see it left int he barn so we put it behind the sink in the master bath.

The bathroom is hard to take pictures of because of the curved walls. This area is beside the shower.

The toliet area.

The shower

The sink in the masterbath.

The bedroom ceiling

the bedroom

The bed ended up going by the curved wall because it just fit there better. It's hard to fit straight furniture against curved walls.

So this is about it for pictures for now. There are a few more things that we still have to do. A building to build for a garage, handrail, and the few other odds and ends.

Since I last updated...

When I left off last we still had the trailer sitting in the yard. It is now removed. Once the trailer was gone we were left with the concrete runners that had been poured under it. So Chris decided to move those runners to help make a sidewalk to the front porch of the house.

The big blank area left now. There will be a garage built there eventually.

They started moving it a piece at a time because it had to be cut.
It was too heavy in one piece.

Chris and Hunter decided to put railroad ties on either side of the concrete and then we put gravel on top.

It looks nice. The only problem is that everyone wants to walk on the railroad ties and not on the gravel.

We saved the porch off of the front of the trailer and thought about using it for a greenhouse. Since then we have bought a pool and made it a porch by the pool.

The railroad ties and gravel cost us about $400.

Now I will go ahead and write another post because I am so far behind!!!

FInishing up

There hasn't been too much work on the house lately because we are done with all but the master bedroom. We have been spending some much needed time just enjoying our new surroundings and seeing family. There are a few more finishing touches to add pictures of but for the most part I would say we are done.

we used old feed sacks are part of our curtains

This is the downstairs bathroom mirror.

We hung up some pictures from an early 1900's fashion magazine and then added some old hats.

 The finished shower in the gameroom.

The old trailer should be moving out soon. We took the front porch off of it and we are going to make a greenhouse out of it.

The future greenhouse.

I think that the grand total spent on the house is right around $75000. Which is more than we thought we were going to spend but we did add more stuff to it. I still don't think that the cost was too bad. We were told that the price of the house would appraise at about $350000 finished.