Shipping containers become $1,500 home

Shipping containers, bought online, become starter home for Maine couple. One of the shipping containers has plumping, electricity, and insulation.

Trevor Seip and Jennifer Sansosti stand outside their container home in Ellsworth, Maine. The couple have transformed two 20-foot-long shipping containers – which they bought on eBay – into their home.

Kate Collins/Bangor Daily News/AP

June 21, 2011

ELLSWORTH, Maine – A rural Maine couple calls home a pair of former shipping containers bought online for $1,500.

Trevor Seip and Jennifer Sansosti have spent a year modifying the containers on their 63-acre property in Ellsworth, where they hope to eventually build a conventional home.

Each container measures 20 feet long, 8 feet high and 8 feet wide. One is insulated, plumbed and wired. It boasts a bed and table that fold against the wall, a sink, a camp stove, a propane heater, a shower and a composting toilet. The other has a closet and a folding futon.

Sansosti tells the Bangor Daily News in Monday's editions every inch of the 160 square feet of floor space was used.

Seip lived in Stroudsburg, Pa. Sansosti is from New York City. They say Maine is more tolerant of their unconventional housing choice.