Remembering “Little Trump,” the Boeing 727 Converted Into a Home for Just $30,000

For more than two decades, the tiny house movement has been picking up steam. The 2020 international health crisis and the housing crisis really helped push this alternative lifestyle into the spotlight, which, in turn, has led to more varied products. Downsizing or tiny house living includes now anything from mobile homes to RVs and all manners of conversions.

Jo Ann Ussery did it long before it was the “cool” thing to do. She also did it big.

That’s not to say that the Boeing 727 house, aka the “Little Trump,” is the first airplane conversion home, but it remains one of the most spectacular to this day. Part of the reason why it’s impressive is the fact that the entire conversion cost a mere $30,000 (with a very important caveat in that Jo Ann owned the land on which she placed it) and that she did it all on her own. The latter earned her the nickname of “gutsy little grandma.”

Jo Ann’s (quite motivational) story started in 1993, when her home in Benoit, Mississippi, was completely destroyed in a storm. Left with little money, no home, and two children to care for, and following the recent passing of her husband, Jo Ann began looking into options for mobile living. However, for the $5,000 she was willing to spend in the first stage, she could only get small campers that wouldn’t have been suitable for two young kids.

Jo Ann’s brother-in-law Bob worked as an air traffic controller at the nearby airport and asked her whether she’d ever considered the option of living in a plane fuselage. As it so happened, a Boeing 727 had just been brought in for parting. That plane, Continental Airlines’ first Boeing 727-224 (serial number 19510, registration number N88701), had flown between 1968 and 1993 and was retired in early 1994 and shipped to Mississippi to be taken apart.

When Jo Ann visited the airport, she fell in love with it on her first tour on board. She paid $2,000 for it, which was the total for its weight in metal, and another $4,000 to a company that moved it to her land nearby, by the lake. For the next several months, Jo Ann would spend an additional $24,000 on the conversion, which included a thick layer of concrete to anchor its tail so that its nose would be suspended over the lake to create the impression of flying, stripping it bare, and turning it into a home.

And a home it was! Named “Little Trump” after Donald Trump’s $16 million corporate Boeing 727 jet, it featured three bedrooms, one master bathroom with a tub and a jacuzzi (and views to die for, as it was located in the former cockpit), a smaller restroom, a laundry room, a full kitchen, a lounge, and exactly zero noisy neighbors. Access was done through the original airstair, now activated by a garage door opening mechanism.

Jo Ann’s home measured 138 feet (42 meters) in length, offered 1,582 square feet (147 square meters) of living space, and had 76 side windows and 10 windows in the cockpit. None of them opened, but she had air-conditioning. The home was also insulated, with new floors and carpeting, but still retained one of the original airplane bathrooms and the original storage compartments overhead.

One of the most spectacular features was the master bathroom, which featured a tub right under the windshield, with the original controls in place, and the jacuzzi nearby. Since the nose of the aircraft hung over the lake, looking out the windows gave the impression of being in flight.

The former beautician did most of the conversion herself, and that was obvious from the styling of the interior. It featured plenty of flowery fabrics and furniture decorations, but it was also comfortable and, as Jo Ann, herself said in an interview with NBC Today Show, lacked absolutely nothing you could find in a regular home.

In that same interview (see below), Jo Ann said she planned to live in the Boeing 727 home “forever,” but she only did so between 1995 and 1999. In 1998, she hired another firm to move the home to another location just one mile (1.6 km) off, where it would have been put on display for the public. It fell off the carrier and was permanently damaged. It was never heard of again.