Along a line of ordinary houses, a wooded one-acre lot at 147 Shady Lane in The Plains is now host to a two-story castle built of storage containers complete with a spiral staircase and crenellations sweeping the treetops.
Sean Jones, who flips many houses — mostly student rentals — through Rockside Rentals, is fulfilling a long-term goal with the project.
“I thought, ‘Here we go again,’” said Richard Wilson of Wilson Construction. “He’s always doing these things. Let’s just say it’s never boring work.”
Wilson Construction has partnered with Jones on every project he has picked up. Jones is renting out about 16 houses in the county.
But none of them looks like his latest project. For eight years, Jones, who previously worked in the storage business, has kept a stock of industrial shipping containers on the Shady Lane lot.
“That lot was a tricky lot to build on. To put a conventional house on it would be difficult,” he said. “So I thought, ‘I’ve got to do something different.’”
He laid the foundation with four steel containers, turned vertical so that they shoot 40 feet into the air. After building a spiral staircase in one, which acts as the castle’s main entrance, he welded them together with I-beams, creating a 2,800 square-foot truss.
Wilson’s team built the walls between the containers so that the floor would hover above, not touch, the ground. The house is elevated to look as if it is hanging from the rocky hillside.
Because Athens city code enforcement has no authority beyond city limits, Jones selected a site in The Plains to build the castle.
“The code of Ohio requires a foundation,” said John Paszke, director of code enforcement in Athens. “We’re supposed to follow the state’s code, but The Plains doesn’t have that type of jurisdiction, so even if it is illegal, no one will inspect it.”
But Jones is confident that the foundation of the house is just fine, and Wilson agrees.
“This has got to be the strongest house out here,” Jones said.
Yet Jones was skeptical of bringing his castle house idea into town for fear that “the city wouldn’t appreciate the aesthetics of it.”
Soon, the 4-to-5-bedroom house will be covered entirely to look like rock. Jones believes that the original storage container will be visible on only a portion of one interior wall.
The castle even offers a roof patio where future renters will be able to host parties in the treetops between the castle’s turrets.
“We’re treating this as an experiment,” Jones said. “If we get a tremendous interest in the house, we want to do an entire project.”
Next, he plans to build a hobbit house on Athens’ Hooper Street using the storage containers.
Though Jones said he doesn’t know whether he wants to take the Disney or authentic route with the aesthetics of his new dig, he expects it to be finished by July. The market is already competitive for potential tenants, Jones said.
“The traffic in the subdivision has picked up tremendously,” Wilson said. “We’ve even had people park and get out of the car to video it.”
The two-story castle in the woods, when finished, will be leased for $1,400 per month. Most kids, though, would argue that growing up in the castle on Shady Lane would be priceless.
oy311909@ohiou.edu
