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Home » Upstate Adventure » Our New Shipping Container Flooring

Our New Shipping Container Flooring

upstate adventure
Posted:4/6/17
Updated:9/22/17

How to remodel a shipping container’s floor to make it move in ready.   Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home!  Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house! 

It’s been a few months since I last posted about our Upstate Adventure and what’s going on with our shipping container! As some of you might remember we bought a shipping container to turn into a vacation home.  First – we painted the interior – what a difference some white paint makes (life motto!).   But how about those ugly original floors…?!   Well it’s time to redo the flooring to make it safe and move in ready!

Before and After (can you believe it?!)
How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

Our container has traveled around the world (literally – you should see it’s travel logs that I downloaded) so you can imagine the flooring had some wear and tear to it.   We decided to go with a used shipping container instead of getting a brand new one because we were on a budget and we aren’t scared of DIY projects.  In fact you might even say we like DIY projects and look forward to our weekend escape of getting our clothes dirty.    


How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

As you can see from these pictures,  the flooring was a mess.  Besides being dirty, there was scratches in the wood and adjustments pieces added on top.
How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!
How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

First thing first – vacuum up the dirt all over the floor and remove any loose wood.  Be careful of splinters!  This is the easy part but it’s important for the next step.
How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

Let’s talk about the shipping container floor first.  We don’t know what was shipped in the container – it could have been boxes or it could have been chemicals.  Either way, the original flooring was probably treated (pesticides) and wasn’t safe to use as is.  When redoing a container floor you pretty much have 2 options.  1) Rip out the entire flooring and redo 2)  Seal up the original flooring and cover it up.  We went with Option #2.  Some people rip out the floor with shipping containers and create a vapor barrier with blown-in insulation for the walls if they are extremely worried about chronic exposure of existing pesticides, but this is pretty pricey and you might want to think twice if a shipping container is best for you when you start to calculate costs.  If you are buying a single use container you may be able to specify a “safe” flooring.  

We did a lot of research when it came to the flooring and what products we should use to seal it up.  We wanted the floors to be safe.  Eventually we would be sleeping here on weekend trips, and one day there will be a baby (babies?) crawling around causing madness.   We decided to mix Epoxy Clear Base and Epoxy Curing Agent together to create a sealing effect on the container flooring.  We bought these products off of this horribly designed website and they were helpful in deciding what products would be best.  They focus on redoing boat floors, decks, swimming pools and nuclear reactors (seriously) so they know epoxies.  (Note: the total for these epoxies + shipping was $339.55 ).
How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

When the epoxy is mixed with its hardener a chemical reaction is set off and you can feel the heat from the reaction coming off.  Don’t worry if it gets hot as it’s supposed to.  Remember to wear gloves though to keep the splashes off of you.  How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

After you’re done mixing then you’ll want to apply directly to the clean floors.   We used an ordinary thick nap paint roller to be able to get into the uneven surface.  Depending on the temperature and mix epoxies can harden fast so work quickly.  Start from the back and move forward.
How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

Now let the epoxy dry (about 7 hours, but to be safe just let sit over night).
How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

After it dries it will be very shiny and look wet… but it’s dry!
How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

After the epoxies dried then we added 1″ foam sheet insulation and 3/4″ OSB wood on top of the sealed flooring. The underside of the container is open so this is the only insulation that the floor will have.  
How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

3″ wood screws were used to secure the OSB and sheet insulation to the original flooring.  How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

This didn’t take long to do at all.
How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

So now that the original floors were completely covered it was time for us to approach this project just like we would remodeling our NYC apartment.    We wanted the container’s look overall to be bright, white and have touches of color with the furniture.  For the flooring we went with a modern concrete floor laminate.  We originally were going to go with white plank wood floors but we kept coming back to the concrete look and thought it looked more modern.    I bought the flooring from here (to cover 320 square feet), total price with delivery was $610.22. How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

First we put Underlayment with Microban under the laminate floor tiles to keep the moisture out, as well as helping to flatten the floor incase it wasn’t even.  If your floor has uneven spots in it you may feel them as the laminate flooring shifts as you walk over it.  
How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

After that we started putting the tiles down. Since the tiles lock together it was pretty easy to do.  Must haves when laying laminate flooring are a rubber mallet, a pull bar, a plastic block, and plastic spacers.  You can buy kits that include everything but the mallet.  These kits are usually located in the flooring aisles of your local home improvement store.  Laminate flooring snaps together by wedging the ends of two pieces together and then pushing down to snap them in.  Then you take your rubber mallet and pound on the plastic block to force a tight seem between the two pieces.  A pull bar is used around walls where there is no room for the plastic block or for you to swing your mallet.  The spacers go around the edges of your flooring against the walls to keep everything nice and even.  Having a gap around the edges of your flooring is important because it will expand and contract with temperature changes.  If you don’t leave a gap your flooring will buckle and you will have big problems.  The gap eventually gets covered by molding.  
How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

And just like that the floor was all done and ready to be Swiffered clean (dirty boots!).
How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

One thing to point out.  If you notice on the sides we put down painted white 2x4s and molding.  The long-term plan is to frame, insulate, and drywall the metal walls and even though we are doing this in the future we had to put the base of the frame wall down before we could do the floors.  Most people are going to be doing things in the “proper” order (seal, frame, insulated, drywall, flooring) so this won’t be an issue.  
How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

Molding hides the ugly gap that is left for the laminate floor expansion.  There are many styles of molding that can be a bit over the top but we went with something minimal that matches our style more.    
How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

Overall I’m really happy with how the floor turned out.   By painting the container and redoing the floor it looks brand new now!  I can’t wait to reveal to you the entire furnished container… but you’ll have to wait a little longer! 

Hope you enjoy reading about our little Upstate Adventure!  I can’t wait to show you what’s next… furniture… skylights…. and more!

Edit: Make sure to check out the complete before and after of our shipping container with the final reveal!

How to remodel a shipping container's floor to make it move in ready. Find out how to easily refinish the floors on a budget to turn it into your modern dream home! Great design inspiration and cost info for your shipping container house!

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  1. epoxy lantai says

    December 8, 2018 at 10:49 pm

    So cool!!! I can’t wait to read the next in the series.

    Reply
  2. Mark Matthews says

    October 21, 2018 at 8:23 am

    Did you use all of the epoxy on the 320 sq.ft. floor? My project is 1280 sq.ft.

    Reply
    • Pamela says

      October 25, 2018 at 4:33 pm

      Yes Mark, we used the epoxy on the entire 320 square feet. Hope this helps!

      Reply
  3. Ellie says

    April 30, 2018 at 8:10 pm

    Thank you so much for sharing your experience. My husband and I are also considering building a home from shipping containers. This is very helpful. Quick question: did you have to use a special paint for the outside? Just wondering if the container will rust over time?

    Reply
    • Pamela says

      May 1, 2018 at 9:17 am

      Hey Ellie, you can use a marine grade DTM paint for the outside of the container – this will help it through tough weather elements! The big question – what color!? 😉 Have fun with your project!

      Reply
  4. Liz says

    September 23, 2017 at 9:28 am

    Are you safe if lightening strikes the container or comes through the ground?

    Reply
    • Jack Spratt says

      July 28, 2020 at 11:16 pm

      Yes, just don’t be a better conductor of electricity than steel.

      Reply
  5. Jerome says

    September 22, 2017 at 9:26 pm

    Nice description. Thanks, Jerome

    Reply
  6. Leo says

    August 11, 2017 at 3:42 pm

    Did you guys do anything to degrease or clean the floor further than just sweeping and vaccuuming?

    I just ordered the same epoxy for my container!

    Reply
    • Pamela says

      August 11, 2017 at 5:40 pm

      Hey Leo – that’s all we did! Good luck with your container project!

      Reply
      • Leo says

        August 13, 2017 at 10:24 pm

        Awesome, thank you! Epoxy goes down on my floor tomorrow evening!

        Reply
  7. Anu - My Ginger Garlic Kitchen says

    April 12, 2017 at 12:50 pm

    Wow, 70 degrees already? How lucky you are. We are still struggling with winter here. And woah, you guys are really creative. So much in love with that pretty and bright colors. 🙂

    Reply
  8. Jeremy Watkin says

    April 12, 2017 at 1:02 am

    So cool!!! I can’t wait to read the next in the series.

    Reply
  9. Karen (Back Road Journal) says

    April 11, 2017 at 10:10 am

    You two are so creative and are certainly going to inspire others to think outside the box, in your case a shipping container. Love what you have done and can’t wait to see the end result.

    Reply
  10. Kathy @ Beyond the Chicken Coop says

    April 9, 2017 at 8:51 am

    That has turned out beautifully! I love the floor, but I really love the entire space. So bright and inviting. Nice job!!!

    Reply
  11. Jamie | The Kitchenarium says

    April 7, 2017 at 6:05 pm

    This is so dreamy. I love the snapshots of your apartment so I knew you would slay this shipping container. I can’t wait to see more!

    Reply
  12. Cara says

    April 7, 2017 at 5:58 pm

    Wow this is so interesting and very cool. Do you have other posts about this shipping container? Id love to learn more about the idea, how you decided on it and how can it be used as a vacation home. Ive never heard of something like this being done. PS your before and after photos are REALLY impressive!

    Reply
  13. Cecile says

    April 7, 2017 at 3:50 pm

    Wow – it’s AWESOME!! You two are just something else – AND – it seems ‘you two’ are soon gonna be ‘you three’!! Congratulations. Any chance that your carrying twins… like I did? ; o )
    Question – do you have windows… or ‘will you have windows’?

    Reply
    • Pamela says

      April 7, 2017 at 4:59 pm

      I didn’t know you had twins Cecile! Only one here, a girl! <3 We are getting 2 skylights installed this Summer and will be doing glass doors in the opening to bring in natural light!

      Reply
  14. Jersey Girl Cooks says

    April 7, 2017 at 3:46 pm

    Wow! Its so awesome! I love all the colors.

    Reply
  15. Debbie - Mountain Mama says

    April 7, 2017 at 2:55 pm

    Holy smokes you’ve done so much with that shipping container – I must have missed the previous post, I didn’t even know it was livable yet!! Are you eventually going to put in plumbing and a bath and kitchenette?

    Looks like spring is finally coming to the mountains, starting on Sunday – let the planting begin!

    Reply
    • Pamela says

      April 7, 2017 at 5:02 pm

      I can’t wait to see what you’re planting! We started our seeds inside here! It has a little kitchen section now – basically just a island since our Summer cooking is usually outside, but no plumbing. I think it’ll come with time, but we’re unsure of what we want the container to turn into so holding off!

      Reply
  16. Phi @ The Sweetphi Blog says

    April 7, 2017 at 2:33 pm

    This is SO impressive!!! I am going to go back and look at adventures with the shipping container because it sounds so awesome!

    Reply
  17. Nicoletta @sugarlovespices says

    April 7, 2017 at 12:21 pm

    I am amazed at your DIY skills! I am not at all good at that, but luckily my husband is, and I can at least “pass some tools” 😉 . Your container floor is stunning, agree on the concrete look, goes well with the white and splashes of color! I can’t wait to see the finished look!

    Reply
  18. Sue Mcknight says

    April 7, 2017 at 12:13 pm

    As always…. an amazing “armchair” adventure for this old lady. I am an old dog learning new tricks thanks to you two ambitious, idea-filled & hard working youngsters! Hope baby is learning as she grows (from the inside out) from her multi-talented mama!
    Blessing to all of you….

    Reply
    • Pamela says

      April 7, 2017 at 5:03 pm

      Aww thanks Sue – that’s so nice! I can’t wait to show baby how to garden and for her to help out! <3

      Reply
    • Austin says

      May 17, 2020 at 4:32 pm

      Lots of good recommendation. Lot to consider. Thanks for your experience on the do it right way.

      Reply
  19. Kelsie | the itsy-bitsy kitchen says

    April 7, 2017 at 11:12 am

    Ummmmm what? I can’t believe that’s a shipping container! (And wouldn’t believe if you didn’t have all the before photos.) You did an awesome job and I’m so impressed :). I’m excited to see the skylights. Have a great weekend, Pamela!

    Reply
  20. suzanne says

    April 7, 2017 at 10:45 am

    Looks great, shipping containers are very cool. Is there going to be a bathroom and kitchen?

    Reply
    • Pamela says

      April 7, 2017 at 5:07 pm

      We have a little bathroom section now with a slick little portable toilet, mirror, etc, but no plumbing so its not very extravagant! For now it gets the job done! I would love a full tub looking out over the view – maybe one day! 🙂

      Reply
      • Al says

        October 25, 2018 at 12:09 am

        We are in the process of building out a container and I need to epoxy seal the floors. Everything says to use isopropyl alcohol to clean the floor first. Did you do this?
        If so is the alcohol mixed with anything? If not what if anything did you clean the floors with.

        Reply
        • Pamela says

          October 25, 2018 at 4:38 pm

          Hey Al, we didn’t clean the floors, we just swept and sealed them.

          Reply
  21. [email protected] says

    April 7, 2017 at 10:17 am

    This is incredible! The before and after is amazing. I would never have known that you could do that with a shipping container!

    Reply
  22. Wendy says

    April 7, 2017 at 10:16 am

    I am having such fun reading this series and really look forward to the next installment! I had never heard of using a shipping container as a home until your series. Of course now that I am aware, I have read more in several places! Your project and abilities are amazing! I am in awe, truly!

    Reply
  23. Anna says

    April 7, 2017 at 5:08 am

    It’s fantastic!!! 🙂

    Reply

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