Rich heiress builds California house out of scrap 747

Your house is definitely not the coolest on the block unless its made out of jumbo jet pieces. Francie Rehwald, daughter to a family owning multiple Mercedes Benz dealerships across California, just started construction on her new house made completely out of fragments of a scrapped Boeing 747. For forty thousand dollars, Rehwald purchased the pieces from an airplane junk yard in the Mojave Desert and after waiting over a year to get 17 permits pushed through the bureaucracy, finally just started taking delivery of wing segments.

The house and various surrounding structures will be built out of every single piece of the aircraft. In addition to the main 4000 foot square homestead, pieces like the nosecone will be used for a meditation pagoda while the tail will be used as a viewing platform for the surrounding area.

Rehwald, who says "I love to recycle, I love green houses and contemporary architecture, and I especially love nature and the natural environment," apparently believes that this structure will be a sustainable, green alternative to conventional construction.

What's interesting to me is that Rehwald still considers herself a staunch environmentalist in spite of the ruckus and cost involved. Sure, she's recycling old materials to use for her home, but do the economic and environmental impact of moving the parts up to LA justify it? A helicopter costing $10,000/hour was required to move large sections of the wing, while several sections of the expressway had to be closed to move other parts up the coast. Would is just be better two melt down the aluminum and recycle it? It seems kind of selfish to me.

Filed under: Airlines, Ecotourism, News