![The author's ‘ultimate hangar’ design was largely informed by a negative example, as well as a number of friends’ very nice hangars. [Courtesy: Sam Weigel]](https://flyingmag1.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/FLY0825_3.3_Taking-Wing_B.jpeg?width=1946&height=1323)
When my wife, Dawn, and I purchased our airstrip property in 2019, we were still living on a 42-foot sailboat and cruising the Caribbean. We weren’t planning on buying land that summer.
We changed those plans—and once again completely reordered our lives—because we had stumbled across the most perfect slice of airplane heaven near Seattle. While out sailing, we’d been discussing and dreaming what our return to land life would look like and had come to a few conclusions: It would involve a return to general aviation; it would be in the Pacific Northwest; we’d buy a few acres somewhere rural and peaceful; and there we would build our ideal home base for adventures by land, sea, and air.
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Finding the perfect property to do all this before we really started looking was a stroke of serendipity.
The original plan was to build both house and hangar more or less simultaneously. When the price of building went nuts during COVID, we decided the big house could wait for some unspecified future date and redesigned the hangar to incorporate a two-bedroom living quarters for the interim.
We broke ground in September 2022, worked through interminable delays I’ve detailed in past columns, and received our occupancy permit in July 2023. The living quarters understandably received most of our immediate attention and turned out quite comfortable. The hangar was little more than a 51,000-cubic-foot box. Since then, I’ve completed many projects focused on turning the hangar into what I originally envisioned.
I should note that I’ve had a hangar before. When I owned a 1953 Piper Pacer, I rented a small T-hangar at Flying Cloud Airport (KFCM) outside Minneapolis. Hot in the summer and frigid in the winter, dark and bereft of electrical service, equipped with a dirt floor and a rather cantankerous sliding door, it was not a place I enjoyed spending time. Thus my “ultimate hangar” design was largely informed by this negative example, as well as a number of friends’ very nice hangars I’ve enjoyed over the years.
The blank canvas was a pole barn 50 feet wide and 60 feet deep, with a concrete floor embedding some 3,000 feet of five-eighths-inch PEX tubing. The poles divide the space into 12-foot bays lengthwise and 10-foot bays across. The walls are framed by 2×6 girts, and the metal roof is supported by 2×8 purlins spanning six giant trusses set at an eave height of 17 feet.
To one end is a 44-foot-by015-foot, one-piece hydraulic door supplied by Higher Power Doors, which has the singular advantage of not requiring an engineered header and provides a clear span large enough for a Cessna 185 on amphibs (pure coincidence). On the other end is a man door and a 9-foot roll-up garage door. For among its many other roles, this hangar is also our garage until we build the big house.
My first priority was light. I originally installed eight 150-watt LED high-bay lights of 24,000 lumens each, judged this insufficient at night or with the big door closed, and added four more. These were later augmented by 10,000 lumen shop lights in each workshop bay. I originally wired in only the eastern half of the hangar, providing one lighting circuit, a 30A hangar door circuit, and two 20A receptacle circuits.
Soon after moving in, I added a 100A shop subpanel with three additional 20A circuits for the rear and western walls, plus a 240V/50A welder circuit. Most recently, I installed a Generac 18 kW propane-fired generator, a project made considerably easier since we incorporated the transfer switch when we first brought in electrical service.
Our hangar has strong southwesterly exposure, and the first summer brought a succession of broiling afternoons. The eastern separation wall between the hangar and residence was already insulated, sheetrocked and taped. On the remaining walls we installed R21 batt insulation, then hired a contractor to apply 3 inches of spray insulation to the roof, gable ends, and hydraulic door.
The hangar stays much cooler in the summer now and is moderate enough in the winter that I’ve been rather lax about finishing the in-floor heat project. A few months ago I finally ordered a pump and manifold kit from Radiantec of Vermont, learned to sweat copper, and ended up with a really nice clean installation. The boiler will be installed later this summer, and the hangar should be quite comfortable come January.
I’ve never had the room for a decent shop at any property we’ve owned and didn’t even have much of a tool collection (or a good organization system) until we moved aboard Windbird. Between the boat, our Stinson 108, and the property build, though, I’ve amassed a decent quantity and variety of useful tools. I bought a rolling Husky tool chest with a wooden worktop early in the build and liked the working height (36 and three-quarters inches) so much that I standardized all subsequent work surfaces to this measurement.
One of my first projects was a 10-foot workbench for the bay just left of the garage door, with one storage shelf below and three above, pegboard behind, and shop lights and power receptacles incorporated. It serves as a feed table to the miter saw I mounted on a rolling cart just to its left, and otherwise is the current home of my carpentry hand tools and home hardware. I overbuilt it with 4×4 green-treated posts, 2×4 and 2×6 lumber, and five-eighths-inch plywood, fastened with hundreds of No. 8 deck screws.
That first workbench and shelving unit was the prototype for all that followed, one after another, now filling six bays. The corner bench to the left of the miter saw houses my power tools and bench vice, and ends at a niche for the rolling tool chest. Beyond that is a 12-foot workbench designated for aviation, automotive, and motorcycle projects.
Continuing south, the fifth bay is divided into 6 feet of office space with a drafting table and filing cabinet followed by a 6-foot closet devoted to motorcycling gear. The newly-finished sixth bay houses a cabinet for camping/backpacking gear and a dedicated workbench for storing, tuning, and waxing skis. The three shelves topping each bay provide quite a lot of storage for bins and construction materials but are augmented by a metal shelving system inherited from a neighbor in the seventh bay and a wooden five-shelf unit I built to the right of the garage door.
Another neighbor contributed a hefty roll of blue utility carpet that I laid down under the footprint of the Stinson and across the living area under its left wing (or rather, where the left wing used to be). Here we placed a sectional sofa and coffee table, refrigerator, and temporary bar on a rolling cart. It’s an exceptionally pleasant place to hang out on summer evenings with the hangar door open.
I’m currently working on plans to build a larger permanent bar out of planks custom-milled from western red cedars I’ve felled on the property. I’ll also eventually get around to building Dawn some coat, shoe, and sporting equipment racks near the living quarters door, and creating a 4×8 rolling workbench that incorporates my table saw.
Mostly, though, what this hangar needs is an intact, flyable airplane.
Since my last update, we pulled the wings off our Stinson 108 and trailered her home, and I haven’t done much with her since other than build a rolling wing rack. I’ve been admittedly remiss in chasing down someone to overhaul the Franklin engine’s top end, being distracted throughout the winter and spring with work, travel, skiing, and hangar projects.
But now it’s a gorgeous Pacific Northwest summer, and I really miss flying the Stinson. I’ve started renting again and am reminded how much I detest it. I doubt the Stinson will fly in 2025, but I’m committing publicly, here and now, to making her airworthy again by next year.
This column first appeared in the August Issue 961 of the FLYING print edition.
