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85-Year-Old Grandma Can’t Stop Building Complex LEGO Sets

By Emma Taggart on January 15, 2026

Every LEGO Set My 85-Year-Old Grandma Built in 2025
byu/woksteampunk inlego

LEGO isn’t just for kids, and this 85-year-old grandma proves it. She was given her first LEGO set by her grandson (known as woksteampunk on Reddit), who wanted to keep her occupied after she moved from China to Canada to be closer to family. While she faced plenty of challenges getting started, she’s now a LEGO pro and building multiple complex sets per month.

“The year started off pretty rough for my grandma,” her grandson revealed on Reddit. “She accidentally broke her thumb and later came to Canada with my mom so my mom could take care of her while still working. She didn’t have any friends here, and the doctor told her that at her age she might never fully regain full flexibility in her hand after the fracture, which made things even more frustrating.”

The caring grandson thought that building LEGO sets might help his grandma stay busy and work on her finger movements. So, he gifted her a botanical set from LEGO’s bouquet series. “At first it was pretty difficult,” he recalls. “I noticed it’s common for older people like her to have trouble visually identifying the orientation in 3D building instructions, so I basically had to show her how to read the instructions at almost every step.” He adds, “What surprised me was how quickly she improved. By her third month of building, she was able to finish sets with over 3,000 pieces in just two weeks”

So far, the grandma has completed 15 challenging LEGO sets over the course of 2025, including the Spring Lantern Festival series, a LEGO tuxedo cat, and Hogwarts Castle. Although it wasn’t easy, she didn’t give up, and never left a build unfinished.

“Looking back now, I think the biggest challenge and real game changer was the Concorde plane,” says her grandson. “It has a moderate level of mechanical buildup that helped introduce her to the world of Technic, and it also requires a fair amount of hand stability, which was difficult for people of her age since they more or less had hand tremor issue.”

Seeing his grandma’s new-found love of LEGO, woksteampunk couldn’t help but invest more in her hobby. “I have to admit that buying a large LEGO set every month was quite a financial burden, especially since I never wanted to resell any of her builds to a second hand store,” he says. “But looking back at the end of the year, I felt nothing but happiness knowing how far she had come.”

Find out more about this heartwarming story on Reddit.