Some good friends of ours have been building an airplane in their garage. That’s RIGHT! Isn’t that an unusual and exciting idea?
We go bowling with them most Wednesday evenings and compare notes about our newest projects. They’ve sent some pictures of their progress in building a hangar for the airplane on a piece of land they recently bought.
Recently, they sent a picture of their newly poured floor of the hanger!
The hangar will be 42 feet x 50 feet. They invited us to come see what they’d been doing, and we jumped at the chance! We drove about an hour to get there, planning to cook dinner outside.
It was a good thing she gave me most of the directions to their land because our GPS refused to recognize the address she gave me. :0( Happily enough, we drove right to it.
To say we were impressed doesn’t begin to cover it. There was a tornado about a year ago through the area, and we could still see the path of it through the trees that remained. They showed us where some of the hangers at the rural airstrip had been wadded up like trash and tossed. There was damage to the clubhouse everyone there shares, but they all pitched in time and materials to fix it. People were still fixing damage to hangers and trailers and things.
Thankfully, our friends only lost a few trees.
Not only did we see the glorious new floor of what will be a quonset-hut style hanger with a two-story ‘apartment’ adjoining what you can see here, but we also got to see the trailer they use while they’re working on the hanger.
I was absolutely amazed by how HOMEY everything was. It was rustic – we had to drive over to the clubhouse to go to the bathroom, for example, but everything else was terrific.
They had put down used carpeting and shingles to fashion a patio. They put up two tent tops together, with decorative corners made of what I think were super nice tall tomato or plant cage type thing with metal leaves on them. They had a glass table and some outdoor chairs where we could eat. She had used wooden pallets she scrounged, cut some in half and piled them up beside the trailer and covered them with a wipe off tarp to make a ‘buffet’ for serving. They put legs and an enclosure from wood and leftover tin roofing type material to make a huge cooler for bottles of water and whatever. They had little bitty white Christmas lights strung up under the tent tops for wonderful, fanciful lighting.
Everywhere around us where big, gorgeous plants – elephant ears, begonias, ivy, and a purple leafy plant I’ve never seen before and LOVE. When the sun finally was giving us a break, it was quite comfortable.
She had picnic stuff in a huge bag so she didn’t have to gather up everything every time they wanted to serve food, so we brought that out and set the table. Steaks, baked potatoes, green beans and drinks, with ice cream and strawberries for dessert. Our wine, their wine, and bottles of water were shared.
I’m so impressed. Not only are they making a dream come true with building their own plane they’ll fly someday, but a first class hanger, with a place to stay someday. And while they’re creating all this for the future, they’ve created a more homey atmosphere than many people enjoy in their main homes.
I feel really lucky they shared their dreams with us! :0)
