Retiree builds model houses

RITZVILLE – When Lee Egnew retired here in 2011, he contemplated projects to help him endure long winter months.

Building model houses and repairing antique radios proved a satisfying solution.

"I made a couple of model houses when I was in high school," the 73-year-old said. "I gave one to my sister, then my brother and I took the other one to the backyard and set it on fire. It looked like a real house burning down.

"I forgot about the hobby until four or five years ago. This time around, I decided to make the models more elaborate than the houses I built as a child. I knew I could buy craft kits, but I figured that was cheating."

Egnew grew up in Port Townsend and retired to Ritzville after working decades in the Seattle-Tacoma area.

For 22 years, he was employed by an office supply store in downtown Seattle.

Then he changed jobs and worked the next 22 years at a bullet manufacturing company in Tacoma.

"I switched because I like working with my hands better than sitting at a desk all day," he said.

From childhood, Egnew was drawn to this side of the state.

"Our family used to come over the mountains because my father loved to hunt for Indian arrowheads along the Columbia River," he said. "That was a popular pastime in the 1950s, before the dams were constructed.

"It was so different from the rainy part of the world. I was drawn to the wide-open spaces and big sky."

When Egnew retired and Ritzville became an option, he moved here and revived his hobby of designing model houses.

"Sometimes when I'm driving around, an idea for a structure just pops into my head. I might drive by an abandoned schoolhouse out in the county and think, 'Yeah, that project would be fun to do,'" he said.

Some projects are not intended to copy a particular building; others are derived from old catalogs.

For example, he culls project ideas from a 1919 edition of Aladdin House Plans, a catalog of "ready-cut houses."

"In the early 1900s, the company would deliver all the lumber for a house to a railroad siding in your town," he said. "You'd gather helpers and take the materials to your lot. Then you and your friends would erect the structure.

"Even the lathe and plaster were supplied. Back then you could build a three-bedroom two-story house for about $1,600. It was all done with hand tools - no power saws or power hammers."

To build his house models, Egnew sketches out ideas, drafts house plans so the rooms are built to scale, and takes measurements from the drawings.

He notes that old Sears catalogs often specify the dimensions of period furnishings.

He uses them to make everything in the house look real.

"Right down to the newspaper lying on the counter," he said.

Egnew has only attempted one scale model of an actual house - his childhood home in Port Townsend.

He also constructed a model of a restaurant meant to portray Gray's Cafe, a dining establishment that operated in Vantage before Wanapum Dam was built.

As a child, his family would stop there for milkshakes and hamburgers, he said.

Since 2014, Egnew has constructed five model buildings.

"Every winter, I make another one," he said. "I just finished a one-room schoolhouse. For my next project, I might construct a false-front store with an upstairs apartment."

For several years, Egnew and friend Carly Gillette ran the Remember When? antique shop downtown.

Gillette bought her parents' house and turned it into an antique shop in December 2011.

"She and I did a lot of estate sales," he said. "I liked radios and clocks; she liked other collectibles," Egnew said. "We worked well together. For me it was something fun to do, for her it was more of a business.

"I taught myself how to fix old radios by studying books the radio and television guys used years ago.

"Some of these antique radios haven't worked since Franklin Roosevelt was on the air. It's like resurrecting something from the dead. You almost expect to hear his voice coming over the speaker."