What Can You Do with 20 Feet of Steel?
Build a Home
Inside a Santa Barbara Couple’s
Ambitious Shipping Container House
By Tiana Molony | April 9, 2026
Read more from Home & Garden 2026 here.
Quick: What’s made of steel, approximately eight feet wide, 8.5 feet tall, 20 feet long, travels across oceans, and can double as a pop-up shop, a bar, or even a home?
If you guessed a shipping container, you’re right.
They may seem like single-use vessels, but they’re remarkably versatile — a useful trait given that tens of millions exist worldwide, even if the exact number is hard to pin down. After about 25 years of work, most retire. Some are melted down for scrap, while others are given a second life.
In Santa Barbara, environmental lawyer Bret Stone and his wife, fashion designer Dani Stone, chose the latter, building their home from nine of them.
When asked why shipping containers, Bret puts it plainly: “We are consumers,” he says, “and there is a surplus of them.”
At first, he had considered building an office space from a container. “I just started getting an itch to do a project and had it in mind,” he recalls. “But I was looking for a canvas.”
Then he came across an apartment building in Europe made entirely from the vessels and had something of an epiphany: “What if we did a house?”
He found a plot of land in Santa Barbara with stunning views, though it was a “complicated property,” set on a slope that would make construction both more difficult and more expensive. It was also already in escrow.
But that deal fell through, and Bret and Dani moved quickly, purchasing the property with plans to build their forever home.
To realize their vision, they worked with Barber Warner Construction — formerly Barber Builders — based in Lompoc. Don Barber, the company’s founder, brought 45 years of experience to the project. Though he had never built a shipping-container home before, he trusted that his experience would carry him through.
With each challenge, Barber found a solution. At one point, for instance, Stone wanted a single continuous piece of wood for the stairway railing. Barber told him that a piece long enough did not exist. So, Barber carved into the wood and joined two pieces in a way that mimicked a natural grain.
“Every little square inch of that project, we took to heart,” says Barber.
Despite its steel-and-concrete shell, the house feels warm. Barber incorporated wood elements into the ceilings and staircase, softening the space. Stone also gives a shout-out to interior designer Sarah McFadden of McFadden Design Group for her work.
Rock ’n’ roll–themed artwork fills the otherwise spare walls. Bret credits the artwork to Dani, who he says loves rock ’n’ roll and runs a rockstar-inspired fashion brand called the Tribute Project, making one-of-a-kind jackets.
In all, the home is 2,400 square feet. Downstairs is the kitchen and living space. Upstairs is made up of two shipping containers parallel to each other with a hallway in between. One side fits two bedrooms with two bathrooms, while the other is the primary bedroom, which fits a king-sized bed. Bret notes that it’s not a massive bedroom, but “Who needs a huge bedroom, anyway? It’s just sleeping quarters.”
Beyond the main house, the couple used additional containers to build structures across the property, including a pool house with a Murphy bed and another container that acts as an office/storage space.
Standing on the edge of the concrete pool in the backyard, Bret tells me how he hopes the project might inspire others to think differently about sustainable building.
“I was trying to make an impression,” he says. “And let people view this as, ‘Oh, I could do something like this too.’ ”
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