Santa’s Little Helper: Grandpa

 

By Nancy K. Crevier

Pat Napolitano is not a stranger to detail work, or to hobby crafts. The retired Wall Street technology designer for J.P. Morgan has been building stick and tissue airplanes his whole life, a craft that can take him 200 hours or more for each project. But when he opened the dollhouse kit he had ordered to build for his twin grandchildren, he was aghast.

“I could not believe how many pieces there were!” exclaimed Mr Napolitano. That was four years ago, when his granddaughter, Andie, and his grandson, Will, were barely a year old.

“I shut the box and put it away,” he laughed, deciding that there was really no rush to tackle that job.

About a year later, he dared to open the box, take out the instructions and the schematics, and pore over the thousands of tiny instructions.

“I showed the schematics to my builder,” said Mr Napolitano, “and he said this would be just like building a real house, without the foundation.” So, it was back into the box with the directions.

“I kept saying that I would build if for them for Christmas, then their birthdays, then Christmas again…,” he said. Finally, this past June, he decided to buckle down and the sound of sawing, sanding, and hammering soon filled the basement workshop.

“He kept track of the hours it took to complete,” said his wife, C.G. Napolitano, who whiled away those 497 hours browsing through dollhouse furnishing catalogues, as her husband toiled on the 41½ inch x 32 inch x 18 inch Victorian dollhouse.

“I realized later,” said Mr Napolitano, “that I had ordered just about the biggest one they make.”

The kit included 29 large sheets of punch-out, precut laminated wood pieces, plus one large sheet of silkscreen windows. The fifteen 2-ounce tubes of heavy duty glue it took to construct The Beacon Hill, as the house is called, were not included, nor were the strips of ¼-inch wide “wooden” floorboards, the miniature rolls of wallpaper, each tiny door knob and handle, the bathroom and kitchen linoleum flooring, the 3-inch wide strips of “clapboard” siding, the stain for each 1½ inch by ¾-inch shingle, nor event the mulberry green exterior paint.

“C.G. was kind of in charge of the décor,” said Mr Napolitano. “She had fun picking out the different wallpapers and paint,” he  said.

“It is incredible what is out there for dollhouses. It was an eye-opening experience,” Mrs Napolitano said, adding that neither of them had ever delved into the world of dollhouse collections prior to this. “We looked at so many catalogs, but ordered most of it online,” she said. There are brick and mortar stores that stock dollhouse accessories, she said, but most are in New York City or outside of the area.

If it had been just a matter of punching out and gluing  the pieces together, the job would not have been so formidable, Mr Napolitano said. But for many pieces, it meant punching out three matching pieces and gluing them together to form one sturdy piece. Each triangular cornice on top of the Victorian, for example, he said, is made up of three little sections, each one consisting of three little pieces of wood glued together first. The porch columns, as well, required multiple pieces glued together for each of the four sides of the column. 

“The instructions didn’t have a lot of pictures, so I was matching pieces from different sheets to create the one piece, in many cases,” Mr Napolitano said.

That detail work came after he had framed the dollhouse, of course.

“Each step had to be followed exactly, or it wouldn’t work. You had to think five steps ahead,” said Mr Napolitano. Before he could raise the walls to the nine rooms, they had to wallpaper the sections; before installing the railings to the central hall staircases, they had to make sure that the adjacent walls were papered and not set in place yet.

And before any wallpapering or wall installations could occur, Mr Napolitano ran the electricity for the house.

“Each room has an individual outlet and plug for lights,” he said, although he opted not to run the wiring through the ceilings. “I guess the doll family can get along with table and floor lamps,” he chuckled.

Running the electricity was not an entirely new skill for him, he admitted, having learned that skill in his job as technology designer, and having designed and installed an elaborate Department 56 Christmas Village each season in their living room.

“I had some practice with this aspect of the project. But it still took me days, just to get the wiring right,” he confessed.

Nearly two dozen small steps in the stairways each required installing a riser and once again, pasting together multiple pieces to create a sturdy tread, before the entire staircase was put in place.

Exterior work on The Beacon Hill was equally challenging. Individual shingles were stained and carefully cut and sanded to fit the curve of the roof. Every shingle was glued in evenly, overlapping rows on each of the three Mansard style roofs, and putting on the siding was a three step process of tracing the section of clapboard, making a manila template, and then cutting it to fit perfectly.

Mr Napolitano found it necessary to purchase miniature clamps in order to hold some of the sections in place, while they dried.

“I could not believe how small these clamps were,” he said.

“It is a good thing that Pat loves this kind of detail work,” said Mrs Napolitano, “because it required a great deal of patience.”

Working at one of three stations set up in the basement of his house — for gluing, cutting and sanding, and for painting — Mr Napolitano applied himself to the project for four to seven hours a day. In October, he put the last piece in place, with plenty of time to spare before Christmas.

“The other grandparents, Don and Karen Luddington, are assisting with the furnishings for Christmas,” Mrs Napolitano said.

The Napolitanos have bought a special dollhouse turntable on which The Beacon Hill will reside, and “somehow” will transport the cumbersome gift to Orange, where their son Tim, wife Kelcy, and the twins live, on Christmas Eve.

“While the twins are out, we’ll get it set up, and then when they come home, there it will be in the living room,” said Mrs Napolitano. “At least, that’s the plan,” she said.

The whole family is excited about the special gift, which Mrs Napolitano called “A true labor of love,” and anticipates that the children will be equally thrilled to have what the Napolitanos hope will become a family heirloom.

Mr Napolitano said that he does not regret his initial decision to hold off on tackling the building project, after all.

“I think it worked out. Now Will and Andie are at the right age to play with it and enjoy it,” he said.

The dollhouse catalogs keep coming to their mailbox, said Mr Napolitano, but next year, Santa Claus will have to find a new helper. For now, he is ready to hang up his little, tiny tools and retire from the building business.

“It’s been an experience, but I think that’s it for now,” he said.