We spend a lot of our time chronicling the weird and wonderful places that people choose to live, from the myriad minuscule dwellings of the tiny house movement to some truly avant-garde abodes, like this itty-bitty castle built on a Washington hillside.
That said, even we have never seen a house quite this unusual before. That’s because, unlike most traditional dwellings, this home isn’t four walls and a roof; it’s more like a tin can in the sky. Or, in this case, on the ground.
That’s right, the home in question is an airplane.
It no longer takes to the skies, but the Airplane Home, nestled in the woods of Oregon, still enjoys a robust and active life, as the part-time home of a man named Bruce Campbell.
He has spent years transforming an old Boeing 727-200 airliner into a comfortable, livable home on a remote patch of land in the Oregon woods. Now, after many years and lots of work, it’s truly an oasis from the daily mundane grind.
He started the project in the late 1990s and began actual work on the plane in 2000.
He bought the plane for $100,000, less than the price of many homes today, with the dream of converting an aircraft, already a safe and comfortable vehicle, into a permanent home that would take advantage of the inherent beauty and utility of the craft.
As he eloquently put it to LittleThings, “At a cost of hundreds of millions each, we assemble our finest technologies, materials, engineering prowess, and pinnacle craftsmanship into the highest performance, strongest, most protective, enduring, and utterly gorgeous structures our collective cleverness can conceive, use them rather briefly, then, typically, shred them.”
The plane, when captured via an aerial view, looks lost, like a bird flown off course and forced to put down in a field.
Up closer, that well-manicured landscape is, in fact, revealed to be a dense woodland, with a small clearing for the aircraft.
Now, nearly 20 years after he first began work on the project, the marooned craft represents a dream come to fruition
Once you see the inside of the plane you immediately forget that it’s a plane among the tall evergreens of the forest and discover a comfortable cozy home.
How cool is this?
Stripped of most of the seats that define the average commercial airline, the craft becomes spacious and adaptable very quickly.
After all, it takes a good deal of space to transmit passengers, and there’s a lot left over once the seating is removed.
He left behind just a few rows, to capture the plane’s original function and to provide living room-style seating around the perimeter of the plane.
Elsewhere, the seating has been replaced with new furnishings that you would be unlikely to find on your average airline flight.
Campbell lives on the plane for roughly 6 months out of the year, the rest of his time is spent in Nippon, Japan, where he is working on creating a second habitable airplane.
With that in mind, the airplane comes equipped with a comfortable couch that convert into a futon bed.
A long “hallway” stretches down the center of the plane, making it accessible from front to back.
On either side of this path are the necessary accoutrements for the project and the living space.
Food supplies mingle with clothes cunningly hung along the windows, while piles of electrical circuitry waiting to be repurposed.
Campbell is a retired electrical engineer, and uses his skills for the project.
At various points throughout the cabin, rows of seating are set against the walls.
Their strategic placement serve the airplane like couches, and help to form small den-like areas at several junctures along the body of the craft.
Naturally, the airplane is also complete with two working bathrooms, which are fully functional with running water.
Though airplanes don’t traditionally come equipped with a bath or shower, he has put together a shower for his aviation dream home — one more convenience aboard this unusual space.
He also makes full use of a galley kitchen equipped with electricity and small appliances.
There’s no stove or dishwasher aboard, but there’s a microwave and other electrical appliances that take on the responsibilities of a fully-equipped kitchen.
He did recently invest in a small washer-dryer unit for laundry.
Meanwhile, the plane, though grounded, still retains all the mechanisms and ordered chaos of the cockpit.
While this plane is not presently in a position to take off, there’s something distinctly appealing about the idea of a home that, if need be, could simply lift off the ground and head to another part of the world, a veritable Recreational Vehicle for the skies.
This, in part, contributes to Campbell’s vision; his airplane is both home and haven, a space safe from external mayhem.
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