BLAIR COUNTY, PA (WTAJ) – Travis Mangiacarne is always looking to come up with a meaningful, creative gift for his parents each Christmas. 

Around Thanksgiving, he came up with the idea to take on the challenge of trying to build an exact replica of his parent’s house in Hollidaysburg. The project took around three weeks to build and used more than 3,000 Lego pieces.

“It’s a little frustrating at first,” Travis Mangiacarne said “It kept collapsing on me. The roof is probably my biggest issue, but it kind of slowly just built itself. I was kind of surprised on how relatively easy it worked for me.”

The Lego home features every little detail from the outside of his parent’s house.

“I just kind of worked it all from a shrub outside or a little frog statue and a mushroom,” Travis added. “There’s a shed and I built a deck with the exact table that’s out there. And like there’s a swing, the hanging swing.”

As Mangiacarne was building the house, it brought back a lot of childhood memories.

“This is like me and Little League. You know, when my dad and I were having two cats and, you know, I want this to be memories for me as well as my parents and my brother and everybody in, you know, the house has always been since I’ve been born. So it’s kind of a family member to me.”

Mangiacarne had to make excuses for a month to keep his parents out of his house, and when they saw their present, they were in shock!

“He had it covered up,” Sandra Mangiacarne, Travis’ mom said. “Our mouths dropped. Luckily, my sister and as I said, some other family members are here. They got to see it like everybody. Everybody who has seen it can’t believe what he did.”

As the seasons change Travis says he has plans to continue updating the replica house.