COVID-19 Made Some Rethink Current Living Spaces
When the pandemic struck, some people found themselves forced to quarantine in homes that had never fulfilled them. Even if not quarantined, most people stayed home for more hours than before. For many, working from home made them more aware of ways their home didn’t meet their needs. Many of us began to reassess both how and where we live, and some of us still are.
For some, it stirred a desire to change their scenery or break free of multi-family buildings and dense residential areas. Many people found themselves drawn to the outdoors and the countryside, where they feel safer in these strange times. Luckily, rural land can still be had reasonably, even cheaply.
A Smart Way To Build
With land in hand, installing a pre-engineered home from ground up can be done affordably with some DIY skills, and if you use an Absolute Steel metal building kit, you can trust your home to stand strong for decades.
Buying an existing, resale, home can require adapting and problem-solving in spaces designed for someone else’s life, while new home construction gives you the chance to make your home suit your every need.
Barndominiums and Metal Buildings
Barndominiums for example, are a hot item these days. They allow people to build a single structure for everyday living and have an attached-but-separate structure for work.
That’s probably why Absolute Steel remains busy through this pandemic, as we fulfil our clients’ orders for their home and workspace solutions, from workshops and carports to large barndominiums and warehouses. We provide the frame and panels, and customers can then design the interior to meet specific needs.
The past few months have showed many of us how inadequate our spaces are for a life requiring distance from others, including working from home and home-schooling. More people than ever are living a home-based life from dawn to dusk, and they’re becoming more self-sufficient while they’re at it.
The pandemic may end in a few months, or it may take a few years, but remote working won’t disappear when that day comes, and neither will the self-sufficient skills people are learning to get them through these times.
What will change, and is already changing, is our compulsion for living close to urban offices. If you work from home, why live in a crowded urban area? Why not find a country spread with a couple fruit trees or a nice view, when you’re just a Zoom call away from colleagues?
Rural Living and Working from Home
Rural life suits the rise in self-sufficiency seen everywhere, too. People are returning to activities like kitchen gardening, food preservation and fermentation, even baking bread. They’re also starting more home businesses to create additional security in an unstable economy.
All this translates to needing a home appropriate for your life’s basics, as well as your aspirations and passions.
- Having a generous pantry, for instance, is great for anyone raising livestock for family consumption, so they can cure meats or make cheeses or even have a little distillery.
- An outbuilding of any kind can be used to generate income from car repairs or odd jobs pro, or any other career needing a little space to work or room to think.
- An attached space dedicated to work makes the morning commute a dream.
Just Add a Workshop to Your Existing Home
Even folks currently living in homes they love may realize their existing home doesn’t accommodate all their hobbies or work, but a workshop could solve their current home’s deficiencies. For instance, a painter’s studio or pottery kiln, or a t-shirt printing business, or anything else could easily be accommodated in a separate structure, and a metal building kit could see that dream made real in just a couple weekends.
Benefits of Metal
Whatever your dreams of a self-sufficient, safe home might be, Absolute Steel’s kits will ensure it stays standing for decades. Our structures and roofing panels at Absolute Steel are all made from 100% USA steel, so the pandemic hasn’t affected our supply lines. Lower-quality imported steel from Mexico and China may be more expensive these days, but our high-quality, made-in-America steel isn’t.
If you’re on a tight budget, you can frame a home in wood and use steel panels on the roof or outer walls for a long-lasting cladding, but investing in steel framing would produce massive savings over the long haul. Steel won’t get infested with termites. It won’t get mold, mildew, or dryrot. Steel structures are often hurricane-rated, preferred in wildfire zones, and better for flood regions.
Easy to Install
Best of all, a steel building kit is EASY to build. That’s a huge benefit. All studs are measured and cut for you with machined precision. The entire kit is delivered to your job site in a neatly-packed bundle. Easy-to-follow instructions lay out where each piece is placed. We say our building kits are “engineered easy”.
You’ll find our instructions and customer service help make installation a breeze. Customers are often surprised how quickly steel-framed buildings can be put together. It’s partly why the US Armed Forces use our structures around the world, but they also use them because the buildings are tough enough for any climate out there, from Afghan deserts, to Texas hurricanes, to Canadian winters.
Think about it. How could your life be better, or simpler, if your home was in a place you loved to be, but also was safer and custom-designed to suit your needs and aspirations – both for your family and for your work life?
Create Your Own Space
What’s missing in your home now? How could you solve that with a design of your own?
Maybe it’s time to stop hoping you’ll find the right home, and instead CREATE it, on land you love. Whether you’re looking just beyond the city limits for green space with city conveniences nearby or you’re dreaming of living off the grid complete with solar panels, our steel buildings are easily adapted to whatever you need.
You’re looking at anywhere from $40 a square foot through to $120 per, depending on your finishing tastes and how much DIY you’re willing to do. To keep prices down, think of your home as a work-in-process to be added to and improved over coming years, so your home can grow and change as your life evolves, too.
If you’ve got a dream space in mind, our team is ready for your questions. Give us a call to learn more about the process ahead for your dream home or send us your plans for a no-obligation quote.
In the meantime, from our family to yours, we hope you stay safe and healthy.