A door in the master bathroom connects the indoor shower to an outdoor one. Here, Feldmann and the couple’s three-year-old son, Eli, wash their dog Arnold–named by the previous owner after the local St. Arnold Brewing Company. 

The outdoor shower can be accessed through the master bathroom or from the back porch, which is nice after a long bike ride on a hot Houston day–especially since the couple stores several of their nine bikes inside the walled-off shower space.

Robertson–with the help of developers Katie Nichols and John Walker, who were heavily involved in the design process–finished the guest bathroom with Modwalls tiles and a sink they found on eBay. They used a piece of marine plywood, leftover from building the front porch steps, to create a counter on which the sink could sit–and where the family can rest their toothbrushes. To the right of the sink is a Toto dual-flush toilet, which is great for conserving water but has proven problematic for toilet training, as American potty seats aren’t designed to fit these Japanese basins.

The master bedroom is another place where Robertson placed emphasis on the existing size and shape of the containers. The room opens up to a clerestory window beyond the foot of the bed but the exposed edge of the container ceiling makes “you almost feel like a hobo on a train,” Feldmann says, romanticizing about her view from bed.

The guest quarters in the shipping container behind the main house is one of Freeman’s favorite places. “We just haven’t figured out how to use it yet,” he says. When Eli was younger and woke up earlier, either Freeman or Feldman would take him back here to play without waking the other parent. Now, it is predominantly used by out-of-town visitors or the couple’s parents when they come to stay. “The main house is such a social space that I worry about being misinterpreted as antisocial if I go to the guest quarters,” Freeman says.

For the dining room, Freeman and Feldmann swapped their tiny table for Walker’s larger one since he was moving into a smaller space. They topped their new table with a $12 pendant lamp from Ikea and finished the room with a counsel from West Elm.

In the kitchen, Freeman fixes a snack while Eli plays on the counter, one of his favorite spots in the house, second only to the kitchen steps. The horizontal window, which acts as a backsplash, is at the perfect height for looking outside when seated at the bar (stools not shown). Robertson jokingly calls the home the “midrift house,” as from outside, all you can see are the stomachs of whomever is working in or walking through the kitchen.

Tucked away to the right at the end of the kitchen are the washer and dryer. Robertson originally was going to close off the area as a separate laundry room but later decided to keep the space open. The vertical window brings in additional natural light and has become the perfect access point for the compost bin, which sits outside below the window.

Entering the house by the front door (right), the first view one gets before turning left and entering the main living area–where the couple’s dog Ruti likes to lounge–is of the color-shifting fiberglass light wall. “Whenever possible, I like to open up views, not reveal everything at once, which is why I made a subtle entryway to the house,” Robertson says. “It’s nice to not walk right into a room but instead let things unfold as you move through the home.”

The open-plan living spaces act like a “giant kitchen” that invites guests to mingle throughout the house. The white rug anchors the living room furniture, which includes two red couches from Room and Board and a coffee table and end tables that were thrift-store finds.

Throughout the house, Robertson, Nichols, and Walker emphasized the beauty of the natural finishes and colors of the materials they chose. Robertson originally was going to paint the overhead beams but left them in their raw state to match the tiger bamboo that covers the floor. The light wall around the master bedroom, made from Enduro Systems fiberglass, is a light turquoise on the bedroom side, amber on the living room side, and glows green at night when the lights between the two layers are turned on.

The kitchen is the prime spot from which to observe the rest of the house. The view extends through the dining room and living room, past the glass doors and windows, across the patio, into the guest quarters, and out its back wall of glass to the fence that lines the back of the couple’s property and lights up at night. “You feel like the captain of the house in the kitchen,” Freeman says.

The couple had a big flatscreen TV but didn’t want it to be the focus of the living room. Placed on the wall behind one of the red couches, it hangs quietly without drawing attention to itself but is in perfect position for TV-watching from the second couch (not pictured). Below the television is a counsel that Feldmann’s mother picked up at a thrift store for $50. Feldmann had her reservations about the piece at first but after they took off its original base and lifted it on 2-by-4s for an elevated look, she was sold.

In the cutout of the 40-foot-long container along the northern side of the house is the office and play area. It’s a mix of new and old: The bookcase and desk are from Ikea’s Expedit living room storage collection while the small table and chairs were made by Freeman’s grandfather. “He was a furniture maker and would make one piece for each of the 13 grandkids each year,” Feldmann says.

Read more: The Shipping Muse