Most people use a truck to move to their new homes. For one New Zealand couple, the truck IS their home.

Alex and Hannah converted a 1986 Hino flatbed into their own two-bedroom house in the country. And while the project stemmed more from necessity than hobby, the result was anything but hardship-living....

Over the next year and a half, they cobbled together their house-truck using mostly recycled or second-hand items, favoring natural materials when they could. “I didn’t want to live inside a plastic box,” says Alex, “not because I’m a hippie but because it feels nicer and is just a nicer place to be.”

Their house-truck now sleeps them and their cat quite comfortably. It runs on solar power (generally at around 12 volts, says Alex, and has a gas-heated shower and stove. The whole set-up, they say, costs them around $20,000.