The man that built a castle from shipping containers

Then one day I thought I was filming something and broke the camera. In fact, at least I broke it by doing something cool. It was when I was building my tower, putting the top on it. I had it at the top of the tower on a tripod. I was filming myself and I think a big gust of wind caught it and it fell from above to the ground and I thought, oh man, that's like 400 dollars, right there, let me turn it on, that's when I turned on the monetization. What to buy to replace that camera, this is Andrew Camera, out of here.

I have a YouTube channel under my name Andrew Cameron. I do a lot of construction work. Welding work. I

built

a unique building that is all covered there. Talking about Sid Phillips here today. You have a lot of questions for me here, yeah, welcome to the right work podcast because what brought me to your video was when you were building the container house to give a little bit of context to the people listening. Actually, you

built

this house yourself. With very little help from others, you use the large amount of machinery you have, including your own crane.

I mean, building your own place is impressive enough, but it's not exactly a normal-looking house either. It uses a lot of cargo

containers

, some in a horizontal position. some rotated 90 degrees so they're vertical it's four stories tall and made to look like a

castle

uh yeah yeah I guess it was obviously a goal for you to build your own place yeah that was the goal because like I mean, you know who wants to live, you know, like before, I live with my parents, who wants to do that? I skipped the whole apartment phase, you know, I always thought that was a complete waste of money, so I moved on. from you know and I knew I wanted to build my building the way I wanted to build it so I wasn't just looking at empty properties and that's all I could afford so it's a beautiful little piece of London yeah yeah.

It's up on a hill, you know, I think that's why it was a decent price at the time I bought it because it was all a hillside, but yeah, that's what I wanted on the outskirts of town because I didn't want neighbors. a lot because you know I always do things that annoy the neighbors, so you better know that you need a lot of land to do things like what I'm doing, so where did the idea of ​​building a container

castle

come from? Well, the idea appealed to me because

containers

are relatively cheap and very strong, so I thought I could build a fireproof building that could go up very quickly and I wanted it to be indestructible to the extent that it wouldn't be damaged. from you know, fire or weather or stone, like Hurricane Irene once, a lot of trees fell, buildings down, buildings damaged, I saw a lot of other people with their buildings damaged, you know, when I was in the fire department, It was like we went to these house fires and I wondered why would someone build and you would see these houses burned and why would someone make something with wood, that's crazy, that's what attracted me.

I made the entire building out of steel and concrete and since I'm a welder it was a lot easier to build it out of steel anyway and plus when you start doing the math it's also almost cheaper to build it the way I built it, like a little expensive, but it's not like that. Did you have the design idea in your head? Yeah, well, it took me a while. I knew I wanted to do something like that. It just took me a while to figure out how to do it because I wanted a concrete roof. At first I was fine and I didn't know how to do that and then someone suggested Spam Crete which is like a precast concrete slab that can be a roof and then once I started learning about all these different materials it just all came together. .

I know from watching your videos that you are improving the house also that you are building on top of the roof and I have seen you using Sketchup and it seems like you are quite proficient at it, something you learned in school, I did. I didn't learn that in school, the way I learned Sketchup was when I designed my building for the first time. I involved an engineer to help me with the plan, so first, when I built and designed my building, I made a small model of it, like balsa wood. and wood and cardboard, things like that and that's something my dad had also done once, when we did a big extension on our house in the early '90s, my dad actually did a very good job doing the extension with cardboard, but I mean, something looks like a photo of the house, everything is colored correctly and perfect and he essentially showed it to the carpenter and said, build this, this is the addition, um, so I went the same route I built it with. my building, I made a model and then when I was talking to the engineer with the plans.

He ended up drawing the entire building in Sketchup and that's how we were able to communicate through emails, just emailing the building and reviews back and forth and then you know Sketchup was pretty easy to use. You know you can learn how to use it yourself with the tutorials that are available, but this is how I force myself to learn how to use it. Tell me a little about the heating solutions you have for where you live. I heat a small room well so it's very easy to keep it warm because trying to heat that entire building would be difficult because it's huge, although I just installed a pellet stove on the second floor and it definitely heats it up, but it hasn't.

It's not very cold yet, but it's a huge building and it's not insulated, so heating it all up will be a little tricky, but I usually don't mind, I mean, I don't mind letting it be the same temperature as outside, yeah. just put more layers on, what do I mean, the trick is to freeze from the beginning, like when you start wanting to put on a coat, like in November or December, the trick is not to just get used to it and then once it really gets cold, usually already I got used to it then, so how did you get into the school system?

Did you fit in with the whole type of lesson planning and structure or did you find it a little bit like that? A little difficult for someone like you who seems to like to do things his way. I did it well. I didn't do as well in some high school classes like English and Spanish. For some reason I didn't learn a lick of Spanish. That was a waste of time, but I did it. I did well in math and science. Those are the ones I did well on in the second edition of Building Your House. You talk a lot about fire safety and I agree.

That comes from this volunteer experience, yes, I received a lot of training through that and learned how not to build a building. I spent most of the year working on my own building and I'm glad I was in a position where I was able to do that because I wasn't stuck having to take all these different jobs to make money, I was able to just do something like that where you know it's where it was caught, you know, everything cost money. the whole project, but and you're going to glaze, it's you, you're planning on enclosing that entire metal roof structure, yeah, pretty much since June.

I've been working almost full time to close all of that and I'm very close to finishing, um, all the walls were made of a diamond shaped steel plate with metal studs, everything is made of steel, like thick steel, already You know, one-eighth of an inch or three-sixteenths thick and I put in a bunch of windows and it sealed the whole building, there's been a lot of work on that, uh, yeah, it's probably four or five months of work, okay? Do you enjoy the sense of community on YouTube, but yes, I've also met a lot of interesting people from YouTube?

You know, I posted a video of me doing all that soldering and then this guy texted me. Hey you know I live a few hours away from you or I watch your video where you got all that soldering that needs to be done, that's a lot of work, can I come over and help you solder? And I was like, yeah, when I came and the guy was super cool, he ended up going jet skiing a few times this year, and you know, he stayed after he did it. I was there for like two three days welding full time with me and we really got caught up in the welding because at that stage of the project I was working with two other guys putting all the steel in place and we put it like we were. putting all these big beams and stuff on and then you know I would weld them just enough so they don't move anywhere but as a complete product I wanted everything to be completely welded to everything which isn't really necessary but I just built it like that.

Anyway, it was nice to have you come and help, so when did you see you? I guess it was a hit in your view from YouTube. You know, one day I realized that he was putting up videos and posting them, I think. Facebook just to share with uh, you know, people I know locally, but I suddenly realized I was subscribing. I didn't even notice the subscriber thing. I was amazing. Oh, look at all these people subscribing to my stuff. and I kept doing it and I didn't even start, you know, I know people, a lot of people want to get on YouTube because they hear that you can make money and yes, that's true, but I didn't even know that when I started doing it.

I was just doing it for fun, I think that's the kind of key message to take away and don't get into things for the money, it has to be about passion, yeah 100 and usually the money shows up even when are. don't push for it um if you're doing something you're passionate about you know if it's an art or whatever makes sense to them it will make sense if you're good at it it's great to be I can tell the video, it's great that people are interested in what I'm doing and I can share it with people you know so easily with this great camera equipment that you know has come out in the last 10 years or So, yeah, I should have started earlier.

So what are the types of plans for the future? Did YouTube surprise you because I hope you're making a good living off of YouTube? It's happened slowly, I mean, I guess the best way is. It's exciting because it opens up, you know, I'm not stuck doing things that I don't want to do, so like I was saying before I could do it, you know I'm by no means lazy, I spent the whole year working on my building and I'm glad to to have been in a position where I could do that as far as the future was concerned.

I mean, yes, I know the future I wanted, I can't wait for this construction phase to come. Right now I'm just finishing up because I'm going to start taking a lot more jobs for clients again because it's been pretty light throughout the year because of the building, so, because people have been asking if this guy is taking jobs anymore. I'm like yeah, I want it, I'm just finishing this building that took all year and you know, I didn't want to spend a whole year building it, but that's how long it took, so yeah, there's going to be a lot more. jobs again, my goal is to take interesting things, ideally things that take one to three days, four days, but just things that are really interesting and that I haven't done before, I mean, I might as well post some crazy projects like that.

I want to do that, maybe it won't be done the way I wanted. I'm trying to buy this other property and would love to build a small version of my building. I think it would be fun, okay? I know people would love that, so when I built my first building, you know, the castle, I didn't film it from day one, so in this case I might start, you know, I can do things a little bit differently and film it. From day one, that's a project I'd like to do. The things you've learned from building Nut and the lessons that you might do things a little differently.

A bit. I don't feel like I made any mistakes. in that building, if I were to build that building again exactly if someone else wanted that same building, which I think makes sense, I think it's a very practical building to build and use it to build it, it wouldn't be much different, um, the only thing . Maybe I would do it a little bit differently because I knew it was going to be, you know, so hot, you know, right now, things like four stories. I knew it was going to be four stories, but it was two stories for years before it was.

I have four stories, maybe I build the frame a little differently if you're going to do all four stories at once, but that's what I mean, it doesn't really make it different, it's just that the reason for wanting a building smaller is why. I was asking about doing things differently, was it the practicality of heating it up? No, no, no, I just thought it would be fun to build it like a little mini castle. It's almost like a shortened version, but I was going to do something more concrete. more pouring walls, that's something I want to include in these things in concrete ways, so tell me a day in the life, Andrew, like for people who, because you said you said something earlier about looking lazy and I certainly don't think you're coming.

In any of your videos, what time do you wake up? I'm not a morning person, usually nine or so, maybe ten, I mean, sometimes earlier, depending, but you, I'm not a morning person at all, yeah. I mean, as far as the day in the life, I don't know. I start eating breakfast and then I go out and start doing whatever is right for thejob. So is there a plan in your head? Yeah, oh actually, that's a thing. What I do quite often is take notes of what I have to do, just make lists of things to do, just listen and just cross them off as they get done and how long you're working because you say you do your editing at night, well, Now the days are shorter, but it really depends on the day of the work being done, but, yeah.

I mean, today I knew I had this, so I came and prepared for it, but I mean, usually, since it is like that, there's usually a lot of editing to do it, so once it gets dark, I just start editing to that you work with the seasons. From the looks of it, yeah, okay, okay, so what do you do to relax? Is it editing or is it because I know you jet ski and ride your ATVs and things like that? anything else that people maybe don't watch, your passions are what I probably have, I mean, I've watched TV sometimes, maybe I've watched 20 minutes of TV before going to bed, yeah, stuff on YouTube, mostly educational stuff, but not always, yeah, you don't.

To be honest, I don't really sound like a TV watcher, Andrew, it's been a pleasure chatting, you're welcome, have a great rest of your day, Utah, regards.