Three years and six months ago, Playwell Bricks received the commission for a custom designed brick set of St. Mary’s Church in Westport, County Mayo, Ireland. Last month, Playwell Bricks CEO Jason Pyett got to visit the church in person.

The set was commissioned by Westport’s Mixies Brixies, a company who, much liked Playwell Bricks once did, hosts LEGO® workshops for kids to encourage creativity and problem-solving skills. While other Playwell designers were involved, Jason completed the bulk of this design, a project that took almost a year to complete. All told, the final design took over 21, 000 bricks and a collection of instruction booklets that totaled 1,500 pages.

The finished model is roughly ½ m (19.7”) wide, 1 m (40”) long, and ½ m (19.7) high, but the reality of it is that Jason had never actually seen the finished model. Due to shipping concerns, it was a UK company named Way Too Many Bricks who built and delivered the Playwell Bricks design to Ireland.

In a further twist, it turned out that Jason ended up seeing the actual church before he saw the finished model. Last month (August 2024), Jason and his family visited Westport as part of a family vacation to Ireland and the UK.

“I went to see the church!” he tells me with some excitement. “It was a little emotional, weird, and kind of surreal. Because I spent so much time researching and looking at pictures, I knew the church inside and out before I walked inside. That felt weird, sort of like coming home.”

He’d spent months painstakingly recreating the interior in miniature. “I knew where that was and where this was. Everything stacked up in my mind. It was so cool to experience that.”

After visiting the real thing, he was taken to see the model. “I had never seen it before, and my immediate reaction was ‘holy crap, it’s so much bigger than I expected.’ They’d also added lights, which really made the stained glass stand out.” It’s worth nothing that all of that stained glass wasn’t created with stickers, but built with bricks.

In the original commission, Mixies Brixies wrote that they wanted “to be able to lift the roof off and look inside the interior,” so Jason designed all the roof panels to be removable. He sighs. “My favorite part of the design is the interior,” he says. “Unfortunately, when it goes on display, they won’t be opening the roof, because they need the roof to hold the lighting in place.” Instead, there will be a tablet, displaying images of the interior.

He shrugs. “The use-case scenario changed” so the owner’s needs changed. Originally, the set was meant for a private collection. It was only upon seeing the finished model that Mixies Brixies wanted to display it in the community. “And that’s a good thing!”

Jason, always eager for knowledge, learns from every situation. “It’s made me reconsider [how I designed it]. If I was to design something like this again, knowing it could be on display and that they want a detailed interior, I’d have the building split open,” rather than the removable roof.

Of course, Jason took in the local sites as well. He tells me about “soft days,” a kind of misty Irish weather that he’s never experienced at home in Eastern Canada. The rainbows that greeted them everywhere. He climbed Croagh Patrick and visited landmarks related to the famous lady pirate Grace O’Malley. His eyes twinkle, his body buzzing with the energy and the inspiration he’d collected on this adventure.

“You’ll have to design some more sets based on this area,” I tease.

He smirks. “Well, actually…” He stops himself. “You’ll have to wait and see.”

If you have a special place or a milestone you’d like to have commemorated with a custom Playwell Bricks set, please contact us today! Our designers are standing by to help you build your dreams.