Turning a small space into a comfortable, welcoming home: this was the vision of a young Australian couple when they bought 3 x 20ft metal shipping containers in Victoria. And it comes with solar panels.

Like many young couples, Richard Vaughan and Amy Plant have always dreamed about having their own home. However, they have other dreams, too such as traveling the world. This made the couple come up with a no-brainer solution: buy shipping containers and turn them into a compact home.“We definitely wanted something that was low-maintenance,” says Plant.

“We saw a lot of friends who couldn’t do things, saying, ‘Oh, we’ve got to clean the house for a day. We thought, we don’t want really to do that – we want to get out and enjoy life. We thought, small footprint home, it won’t take as long to clean, and also the cost – we didn’t want a high debt level going into having a family.”

“And we love traveling so much that we didn’t want to change our lifestyle too greatly, but we still wanted to be homeowners.”With so much inspiration and excitement, they started to build their own, beautiful compact home in Gippsland, Victoria. The three shipping containers are joined by floating links, acting like little corridors.

“I guess coming from moving around a lot as a kid – being a builder’s daughter – we never had forever homes. So my sentimental value of the forever home is a bit skewed. But we kind of thought, ‘Well, let’s just build for what we need’. Because we don’t know where we’ll end up, we didn’t really want owning a home to dictate everything,” Plant explained. It’s also a good thing that Plant and Vaughan had experiences working in the building industry.

They were able to design their home based on their needs and aesthetic preferences. The couple used various design techniques to make their home look more spacious and functional. The house has a floating roof to provide shade and cool their home in the summer. Solar panels, can save energy and help save the environment.

The best part is being able to live in a home that is aesthetically pleasing without costing an arm and a leg. “We adore it, and it’s really tailored to our tastes,” Plant added. The pair would work on their house renovation on weekends after their employment, which took only five months to complete and cost around $145,000.

Shipping container homes, according to Plant, are ideal for people who own land but don’t yet have enough money to build their dream home. It’s about being distinctive and creative for the young couple, and not seeing homeownership as a major sacrifice to their quality of life. Many individuals go through life ticking boxes: you do your taxes, you do your taxes, you do your taxes, you do your taxes, you do your taxes, you do your taxes,

There’s that quote about working for the house we can’t afford to impress people we don’t really like. It’s about just really being happy with the life that we have. And we love it,” Plant said.

Today, the couple is enjoying their beautiful, compact home with solar panels they built out of three shipping containers. “We’ve got a veggie garden and live by the coast. We spend so much time outdoors and it’s really integrating that indoor-outdoor lifestyle that Australians do so well,” said Plant.

Watch the video and be amazed by the couple’s low-cost home project: