The Youngs have built about 40 model libraries, ranging from a North Vancouver firehall to a Vancouver church and more contemporary buildings.
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On weekday mornings, Ray Young, 64, drives his father, Ding Young, to his workshop in Victoria, where they spend the next few hours working side by side.
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The routine started about a decade ago, when Ding, 94, moved to Victoria after living for three decades in the Lower Mainland. Ray was looking for a way to spend more time with his father and noticed that although Ding’s afternoons and evenings were filled with friends and activities, his mornings were wide open.
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“Why don’t you come over here? We can do something together,” Ray remembers suggesting.
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Sunrise
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At the time, Ray didn’t own any woodworking tools or even a table saw at his Saanich home. But his father did.
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Woodworking had been Ding’s hobby, and the tools he had accumulated over the years became the starting point for a father-and-son ritual.
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Now, Ding comes to Ray’s shop about five mornings a week. Together, they have built more than 800 creations, turning recycled wood and lumber into things like garden boxes, furniture, and seasonal decorations through their business, I Used to Be A Pallet.
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Their latest creation may be their most ambitious yet.
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Installed last month outside a heritage home on West Fifth Avenue in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood, a tiny yellow-trimmed house mirrors the full-sized one behind it — right down to the red front door, yellow railings, glass windows and second-floor balcony.
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Behind the tiny facade of the house, is a miniature library, stocked with books for the neighbourhood.
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Commissioned by Hannah Leyland, an architect born in Kitsilano, the lending library was her way of celebrating the kind of architecture that gives her neighbourhood its old-school charm.
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But the project carried a more personal meaning, too.
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“I have learning disabilities, and reading has never come easily to me,” she said. “So, creating something that encourages people to share and enjoy books felt particularly meaningful.”
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Leyland said she happily watches neighbours stop to look at the miniature house, open its door and browse the shelves inside.
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For Ray and Ding, the Kitsilano model was the product of 140 hours of painstaking work.
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“I had to make around 4,000 individual slits on the sides of the house, just to get them to line up,” Ray said of the process of replicating the home’s shingles.
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The duo’s first model library was modelled in 2018 after the University of B.C.’s Press Building, when the university asked them to create one that mimicked its offices.
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The Youngs have built about 40 model libraries, including a North Vancouver firehall, a Vancouver church and other contemporary buildings. Requests have continued to pour in.
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They visit the building, take photos and notes. Ray sketches out a draft plan for the model, then measures, cuts and assembles each little library.
