The idea for the life-size installation came as the result of a family brainstorming session.

Early in the summer, Chambers had gathered his wife Jennifer and his two daughters Haley and Avery to discuss how to attract more trick-or-treaters to the neighborhood.

Chambers was born the day before Halloween – and it has long been his favorite holiday.

Lately, the day had become a bit of a let down.

“It’s just been dead out here,” Chambers said. “It seems like the kids had been skipping our block. We wanted to get more kids out.”

A light bulb went off in the girls’ heads immediately.

They were both huge fans of the Harry Potter series – and they suggested that their father recreate Diagon Alley in front of their house.

“They grabbed their sidewalk chalk – and started drawing plans out,” Chambers said.

While the girls recreated the magical world on the sidewalk – from memory – Chambers sat down with his sketchbook and started thinking about proportions. If he were going to dive into this project, it would have to pack a big wow factor, he decided.

“I wanted kids to be in awe, but I didn’t want adults to think, ‘Oh this is just a kids’ thing,’” Chambers recalled.

The answer involved making it life-size – and movie set quality.

Chambers was up for the challenge. He had done some construction work before – and knew how to frame a structure, as well as how to build the trim.

He is also a long-time artist, so being creative was not a stretch.

“I’ve done stuff before, but not at this level,” Chambers said.

He had been working in start-ups for the past few years – and Chambers said that gave him an edge.

“Doing start-ups, sometimes you don’t have a plan – and sometimes that’s better,” he said. “I just had some rough plans. I had an idea of the scale. I didn’t use a level; sometimes I didn’t even use a tape measure – and sometimes that helped with the speed.”

He combined his can-do, throw-caution-to-the-wind attitude with a period of time between gigs – and started construction on his Diagon Alley on Oct. 14.