Contain Yourself: Debbie Glassberg

Everyone has their porn. Mine is home design. I also dabble in DIY, which I'm pretty sure is a kinky subculture - the S and M of home decor, if you will. I'm not entirely sure how this happened or when, but this much I AM sure of, shelter magazines, home improvement shows on TV, and big-box stores constantly enabled me. I futz around my house with the tenacity of an obsessive compulsive - think Monk or Rain Man only with ovaries and a paint brush. Don't misunderstand, a neat freak I am not - far from it. As a matter of fact, there are times when my house can be so cluttered that one might need a sherpa to find his way safely from the bedroom to the kitchen. I'm sorry to say that my housekeeping skills don't serve so much as a good example as they are a horrible warning. I've never claimed that cleaning and organizing are my thing. I flunked "tidy" but I'm top of my class in "topcoat," "tack hammer" and "painter's tape."

So, with that in mind, today I would like to begin a new series of weekly (unless I get lazy) posts called "Contain Yourself," where I will share photos and links to what other home design junkies choose as containers for their families, their stuff, and their lives.

Today's home is from Debbie Glassberg, an industrial and toy designer from "Our Man Stan's" hometown of Kansas City, who recently took on something a little larger, seeing homes where others saw only metal boxes.

You know those metal shipping containers that you see on rail cars? Yeah, the ones with the graffiti and the rust. Well, Glassberg has designed a home, made from those metal containers and placed it in the aging Kansas City neighborhood of Brookside.

The home is made from five shipping containers. It’s a little over 2,000 square feet. Her container home is green with geothermal heat, soy foam insulation, bamboo flooring, and LED lighting. Debbie’s father, who owns a factory in China, was able to negotiate with individual Chinese manufacturers for all aspects of the interior of the home cutting thousands of dollars from the cost.

In the middle of the house is a galley kitchen. She didn’t have a lot of space because she was using just the container space. So on one side she made a more of a shallow counter and filled it with energy efficient appliances. There is also a window in the kitchen to serve your guests outside.

The master bedroom is constructed of two nine and a half foot containers that are joined together. She made a his and hers closet that is designed very simply with two boxes and rails making for really sufficient hanging space. Then she created one nice drawered piece of furniture to hold all her other things. Additionally, on the second floor adjacent to the deck is a rooftop edible garden.

Cargo containers are now gaining the attention of many architects, engineers, and designers as a useful architectural material. Glassberg joined with many other container lovers and had the Home Contained built. Aside from the cargo containers, the Home Contained has other earth-friendly features, which include green roof, geothermal heating, insulated walls and solar panels. With these features, occupants will be able to save on their energy usage and money as this will surely keep their electricity bill lower than it should be if they chose to use first hand materials, opt not to have solar panels, and the like.

Photos and video courtesy Home Contained, igreenspot, and YouTube

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