This Dad Spent The Lockdown Building A Replica Of The Diagon Alley From Harry Potter To Surprise His Daughter

Just because you’re stuck in quarantine doesn’t mean that all you can do is sit on the couch and watch Netflix all day. And if you need some inspiration, just take this dad named Dylan from London as an example. The man used his free time to secretly craft a replica of the Diagon Alley from Harry Potter inside his daughter Ella’s closet and it turned out absolutely incredible! He then surprised her by unveiling it on her birthday and the girl loved it!

In a recent interview with Bored Panda, the man said that it took him a couple of months to build the entire replica, and he finished it just in time for Ella’s birthday. “I wanted to do something special for Ella after homeschooling while I was working too and staying in so much,” said Dylan. “Inspiration happened one lunchtime standing in the room wondering what to do with it and it occurred to me that even though it was not much use as a room, it felt like a mini street as we live in an old Victorian terrace house.”

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This dad built an amazing replica of the Diagon Alley from Harry Potter to surprise his daughter

To build the replica, the man mostly used wood and MDF. He also purchased various trinkets off the internet to place in the shop windows and even found some wallpaper with books printed on it to help with the decoration! “The street surface is Lino which is soft and warm to walk on. I also live in a street of many kind people, so I was given old photo frames which I used for shop windows,” explained Dylan.

After his friend, Rob from R Concepts, cut the shopfronts out, the man built the frames and painted everything.

The man built it inside his daughter’s wardrobe to surprise her on her birthday

When Ella’s birthday came, Dylan took his time before revealing the secret street. “So we played hide and seek when she got home from school. After a few goes, she decided to hide in the wardrobe which had a curtain behind it,” said the man. “She didn’t find it straight away, but she also knew I had made something for her so her first words were, ‘I can see something in here,’ then silence as she walked in and then, ‘Can we keep this here forever?!’”

The two then explored all of the little shops and Ella opened the presents Dylan had left inside them. “We played for the rest of the weekend, for example, making ice cream in the ice cream shop with a machine I found. I also dressed up as Hagrid which was hilarious for us both as my accent was terrible, but we went back through the wardrobe to the muggle world as Ella and Hagrid and took cushions from her living room for her reading nook above her bookshop on Diagon Alley,” explained Dylan.

Dylan meticulously decorated each one of the shops

So far Ella has only seen the first Harry Potter film but her parents want her to be able to watch them as she gets older. “I’m reading her the book at the moment, she loves it and really looks up to Hermione,” said the dad.

Dylan also mentioned that he has plans to build a new shop in Diagon Alley for Christmas and we can’t wait to see it!