A Shipping Container Retreat at The Green Creek Shipyard | NC Weekend

The entrance to the Green Creek shipyard gets your attention. How could there be a shipyard more than 200 miles from the ocean? The name really refers to these shipping containers turned into vacation homes in the Polk County community of Green Creek. It's our home. We think it's special. We love to be able to create projects like this here. Siblings Heather, Landon and Reese Schleyball are the creators. Heather and Landon run a business called B&B Breeze that manages nearly 80 vacation homes in 14 states. But they wanted to create less traditional rental units and saw potential in shipping containers. I remember me, Reese, and Landon were just talking on my parents' back porch one Sunday afternoon, and we were like, Hey, we believe in this idea. We think it has a lot of potential. Let's just do it ourselves and prove that it works. So we did. They bought a container from a company that sells them in nearby Spartanburg, South Carolina. They sent the company a design they had sketched out. We sent them our design. They were able to cut out all the windows for us, paint the exterior, and deliver it on site. Reese and a friend cleared the 3-acre site, graded it, prepped a foundation, and used a crane to lower the container in place. Landon got the permits needed to convert the container into a livable space. Definitely a challenge to get the permitting part of it with the city. Hey, do you guys know what these are and how to do all of that? That can be a little bit of a challenge because it is somewhat of a new style of build, although it is a solid home just like any other home. They're not going anywhere. Landon hired contractors to do the interior framing, drywall, electrical, and plumbing work. Heather did the interior design. We had a vision for what we wanted the interior to look like from the get-go. It has a modern feel. There's a bedroom with a mini loft, a bathroom with a glass rain shower, and the living, dining, and kitchen area opens out to a patio through a glass garage door. A large deck over the container provides an outdoor living space and covers half the patio, which includes a hot tub and fire pit. Once the first container was finished, and just to see how successful it was, we were like, oh, yeah, we're going to do a second one. So we started that one almost immediately after the first one was completed. They took advantage of the sloped landscape and cantilevered the second container out from the slope and added a deck. That provides an overhang for a swinging daybed underneath that sits over a pond at the base of a waterfall. The deck features a built-in hammock over the waterfall. There's an adjacent patio with a fire pit and hot tub. And Rhys really is the one who came up with a lot of the design for the exterior of the second container. He has great insight with that and kind of our hands-on guy, so he's able to come up with some of those exterior ideas, and it just turned out beautifully. I like going all out with the exterior, and I'm like, the more amenities that you can create outside, the better the overall experience is. If you can create an outdoor living space, it makes the overall feel of the space actually feel so much bigger. The interior of Container 2 has a rustic southwest feel. It features a full-length sofa in front of a flat-screen TV and a custom-built 5-foot wooden bar in front of a large picture window. Guests can also gaze out a large picture window from the unit's king-size bed. There's a glass rain shower in this unit, too. The two container homes are far enough apart with trees and foliage in between to give guests privacy. People want different. They're used to staying in regular homes, but they want to go try something different and experience that. And the reviews that we get from guests, I mean, it speaks for itself. People love it and really enjoy it. The Tryon International Equestrian Center, wineries, outdoor recreation, and quaint towns are all nearby, but the Schlabaws want the Green Creek Shipyard to be its own destination for their guests. We want them to have a great time alone, to think, to be in nature, to reconnect. If it's a couple coming, reconnect with each other, to have a great time, to take home memories that can last a lifetime. To book your stay at Green Creek Shipyard in Polk County, go to greencreekshipyard.com.