Carl and Joan Sechrist’s car sat outside all summer while Carl built a four-story, pine-sided house in their garage — a dollhouse, as a gift for their great-granddaughter.

“I watched him make it, cut every little strip out that’s on it,” marveled the Selinsgrove couple’s next-door neighbor, Betty Brouse. “Oh, my gosh!”

Carl started with an unfinished, three-shelf, pine bookcase that he bought from A.C. Moore with a half-off coupon, for $50.

“The price I paid for that, I couldn’t buy the lumber to start with,” Carl said.

He built a sturdy base around the bottom of the bookcase, divided the three shelves into three rooms each, and made a pitched roof on top, creating a fourth-floor attic. He installed different floor coverings — tile, linoleum, hardwood — for the various rooms and lined the walls with appropriate wallpaper, including Thomas the Tank Engine, fairies, Mickey Mouse, flowers and even roosters in the kitchen, just like Carl and Joan’s own kitchen — a detail that little Madyson Reich, 28 months, is sure to notice later.

Homey and realistic

Carl could have left it at that and had a fine dollhouse for Madyson. But he added the finishing, and most tedious, touch by covering the outside with tiny planks of lap siding, which he cut piece by piece on his table saw.

“It comes pretty close to the fingers when you have to hold that down and it’s only 3/8s of an inch thick,” he said.

Along with the siding, he crafted intricately framed windows and a door, giving the house a homey, realistic look.

“When we got to the windows, rather than cutting them out, I just had curtains drawn on the windows,” Carl said. “That way she can move the furniture wherever she wants.” Betty’s daughter-in-law, Cathy Beeler, of Selinsgrove, painted softly flowing curtains on the wooden windows. She also painted the front door and added a splash of green to the white house by painting some shrubs around its base.

Amazing to watch

“If you’d have seen it. It was nothing but a plain old bookcase,” Betty said, admiring the little house. “It was amazing, watching him make that thing.”

“It’s a lot of tedious work,” agreed Madyson’s mother, Jessica Reich, of Middleburg.

Carl has done other woodworking, including shelves, cabinets, and a case to hold the military flag from the casket of his deceased friend, Richard Brouse. This is the first dollhouse he’s made, but he was happy to do it.

“She’s the light of my life,” he said, pointing to Madyson as she played in her grandparents’ living room.