It was Christmas in July for Keith and Joan Erickson’s granddaughters who visited during the Fourth of July holiday.
Since April, Grandpa Keith has been building a to-scale dollhouse replica of the Erickson home, complete with the detached garage.
The girls, ages 8, 10 and 11, saw it for the first time during their early July visit to Luverne.
“This has been crazy — “I’m not a builder or a contractor,” Keith said. “I’ve told the granddaughters they’ve given me a project that’s just been fun.”
For weeks Keith has walked around the couple’s North Cedar Avenue home (originally built in 1917), measuring the perimeter and each room, converting the size for the dollhouse.
At 26-by-28 inches, the dollhouse mirrors the 26-by-28-foot, two-and-a-half story original.
Erickson said he received a phone call in April from his oldest granddaughter, Anika, 11, who lives in Muncie, Indiana.
She excitedly told him of the dollhouse she saw at the store and was wondering if he could build her one.
“And not just any dollhouse. I want you to make the house that you and Grandma live in,” Erickson recalled Anika telling him.
She wanted the house to be something she could show her own grandchildren and they, in turn, can show their children.
Plus, she wanted to play with the dollhouse.
Erickson said his first thought was, “I don’t have the ability to make it that fancy.”
However, the retired Luverne school teacher and high school guidance counselor couldn’t disappoint his three granddaughters.
In addition to Anika, Hadley, 10, and Piper, 8, live in South Minneapolis. They soon learned of Anika’s request, and the anticipation has grown through photos their grandpa has shared along the way.
Using materials stored around the house and shingles left over from a recent project on his roof, Erickson constructed a replica of the detached garage.
Inside is the man cave where the girls and Erickson watch TV and also the wood shop, which is the dollhouse’s current home.
With suggestions from friends and fellow retirees, Erickson designed the dollhouse with a removable south side so furniture can be placed inside. The roofs on both the house and garage are removable to allow access inside.
In the house are oak stairs, oak baseboards and oak door frames around each of the 11 doors, as well as crown molding in each room.
Douglas fir is used in the dollhouse kitchen just as it is in the original home.
Erickson said the project has allowed him to reflect on the 50 years he and Joan have lived in their home where the granddaughters’ mothers, Kim and Jen, grew up.
“It’s those first two rooms where we fell in love with the house,” he said about the kitchen and dining rooms.
“Everybody who has ever lived here has kept the house well-maintained.”
He included variations of the built-in China hutch and oak bookshelves that divide the rooms, but he was unable to duplicate the glass and oak doors, opting for plain oak shelves instead.
This fall, he said he plans to build the addition added in 1984.
“They are really fired up by this goofy thing,” he said. “I’ve told the granddaughters not to hold their breaths for this summer. This might be a fall project.”
The girls are pleased with Grandpa Keith’s project.
“It is a lot bigger than I thought it would be,” Anika said. “It looks so realistic.”
In their anticipation for playing with the dollhouse, the girls brought existing toys to out inside the house.
Erickson said his granddaughters searched Amazon.com and purchased a front porch swing similar to the original.
The girls indicated they are currently looking for furnishings that look exactly like those grandma and grandpa have. They are also looking for dolls to depict themselves.
“You can find anything on Amazon,” Erickson said.
Except maybe a replica of grandma and grandpa’s house.
