22,000-piece K’Nex replica of Nebraska State Capitol complete after six months

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) — Over 300 hours and 22,000 pieces later, an 8-foot-tall replica of the Nebraska State Capitol is now complete.

The replica in 24-year-old Ben Rhodes’ living room is not the first he accomplished. The Lincoln man has also built the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and a Ferris wheel.

Through an online K’Nex community, he was able to find smaller pieces to build the Sower at the top of the Capitol.

“It took me, like, a week or so to actually figure out how to make a human being and stand it in the way that the real Sower does,” he said. “I used the small ones, and it’s probably 150 pieces or so just in the Sower alone.”

Each night after work, Rhodes would work on it until it was time for bed.

There were several reasons to keep going, he said, despite wanting to quit at times. One of those reasons was his financial investment

“I had already spent a lot of money on pieces, and I’m like, ‘If I don’t finish it, that means I just blew a couple hundred bucks for no reason. But if I actually go all the way to the end, then it might have been worth something,'” he said.

Without prepping or planning, a given section took him about 10 tries before he got it right.

And after going through with this, Rhodes had a word of advice as he reflected on his half-year journey.

“I just bought everything on the fly because I prefer to design in front of my hands,” he said. “I can’t do it all in my head to begin with, and as far as I know, there’s no software you can do it on. But if you’re going to try something like this, save yourself a lot of time and effort and frustration by thinking about it in advance.”

Now the plan is to keep it up until someone buys it, it ends up in a museum or he and his roommates get too tired of looking at it.