Skip Miller
Final Approach
"A woman whose family founded the first Mercedes-Benz dealership in Southern California is turning a scrapped Boeing 747 into her dream home. “I am as much a part of this world as a bird, the frog in the creek,” Francie Rehwahd told The Wall Street Journal Online. “This is my antidote to the malling of America.”
The retiree says she wants to build a home in the Malibu Hills that is environmentally friendly and “feminine.” “When you look at the [wings], they are very curvy, very soft, and very feminine and thin,” says architect David Hertz, who came up with the idea after flying from Los Angeles to Scotland. Hertz thought procuring a $200 million plane would be expensive, but the jumbo jet found in a graveyard for junked airliners cost Rehwald only $40,000. It’s costing about $80,000 to transport the pieces of the plane up the hillside to the 55-acre property.
Hertz needs permission for the project from 17 federal agencies, and construction is expected to start in June, reports Agence France Presse. The wings will be the roofs of the main house. The cockpit, with the nose pointing skyward, will be a meditation temple. The first-class section will become an art studio. The Federal Aviation Administration asked Hertz to paint a red cross on the wings to alert pilots that the home is not an aircraft crash site. "
-Skip
The retiree says she wants to build a home in the Malibu Hills that is environmentally friendly and “feminine.” “When you look at the [wings], they are very curvy, very soft, and very feminine and thin,” says architect David Hertz, who came up with the idea after flying from Los Angeles to Scotland. Hertz thought procuring a $200 million plane would be expensive, but the jumbo jet found in a graveyard for junked airliners cost Rehwald only $40,000. It’s costing about $80,000 to transport the pieces of the plane up the hillside to the 55-acre property.
Hertz needs permission for the project from 17 federal agencies, and construction is expected to start in June, reports Agence France Presse. The wings will be the roofs of the main house. The cockpit, with the nose pointing skyward, will be a meditation temple. The first-class section will become an art studio. The Federal Aviation Administration asked Hertz to paint a red cross on the wings to alert pilots that the home is not an aircraft crash site. "
-Skip
