NEW MIDDLETOWN — Midwinter can bring plenty of grey skies, doldrums, boredom and a chilly attitude toward any kind of outdoor activity.

But two brothers with an ambitious idea and some ingenuity turned a frosty weekend into a chance for some colorful family fun. The result has brought joy to a whole neighborhood.

Joe Yuhasz and his brother, Les Wright of Youngstown, had a conversation one night in January about what might be involved with building an igloo. On the last weekend of that month, Mother Nature provided them with just the right conditions to put their plan into action.

“So, when we got all that snow we said ya know what, might as well take the opportunity to do it and just watched a couple videos on YouTube, saw how to do it, and went out there one weekend and started building it,” Yuhasz said. “With his stepson and my kids, we thought it would be a cool thing for them to play in, especially since they were off school all week, and in the winter it’s hard to get out and do stuff.”

Yuhasz — a paralegal in the civil division of the Mahoning County County Prosecutor’s Office, and a painter — and his brother, a history and government teacher at Mahoning County Career & Technical Center, spent time in the United States Army as engineers, and lived much of their lives as Boy Scouts. Doing handy work and creative outdoor projects is a regular pastime for them.

“We’re outdoorsy do-it-yourself type guys to begin with,” he said. “So we’re pretty handy and knowledgeable in things like that.”

They bought 90 aluminum pans, filled them all with water and neon food coloring, and left them all in Yuhasz’s driveway to freeze overnight. On the morning of Jan. 31, they began construction in the front yard of Yuhasz’s Ward Street home.

“We bought one of those yellow totes that people use for organizing stuff, and we just threw snow into it, took the drill, put water in it and made a slurry,” Yuhasz said. “So, we’d put a brick down, put some slurry on it, set another brick down — kinda like brick and mortar.”

They worked from 8 a.m. that day until early afternoon, stopped only by a lack of ready materials.

“We actually made three batches, but the second batch, as we were working on it Saturday, we were hoping they would freeze by the time we needed them and they didn’t exactly freeze really well,” Yuhasz said. “They were a little bit thinner, so we really didn’t use many from the second batch, but the third batch sat out all night and it was good.”

On Feb. 1, they worked again from 8 a.m. until the igloo was finished about 3 p.m. In all, they spent about 15 hours on the job.

The final product is a vibrantly colored six-foot-round, roughly six-foot-high igloo with a two-foot-high door on the side closest to Yuhasz’s driveway.

Yuhasz said they used approximately 180 two- to three-inch-thick ice blocks to make it.

“It’s hard to say exactly, because some pieces we had to saw and shape, especially towards the dome,” he said.

The igloo has been a local sensation.

“My son, Zander, his preschool teacher told all the parents, so they’ve been driving past and she came past at night too, to see it lit up,” he said. The igloo is lit at night by a simple construction site spotlight plugged into an outdoor outlet.

It’s almost too popular, Yuhasz said.

“My wife was talking to some of the other moms and they said ‘you can’t do that, because now all our kids are asking for us to do it,’ and it’s been pretty popular among the neighbors,” he said.

Adults and children alike walk by and ask to see inside the igloo, and Yuhasz is happy to oblige.

“We don’t get snow or weather like this too often anymore so we figured we’d take the opportunity. Now my wife says we have to do it every year but I don’t know if the winters are going to be like this every year,” he said.

While his children and others have enjoyed it, the adults in Yuhasz’s family also have made the igloo a place for fun.

“It was cold when we were building it, but it was nice just to be outside in the yard doing things we did when we were kids,” Yuhasz said. “My brother has a friend, who had an extra keg from the brew fest in Youngstown, and he brought it over and we set it up in there and sat out and had a few beers and just hung out at night.”

Yuhasz said he’s glad the igloo has brought interest and happiness to the neighborhood, but with temperatures today expected to reach 40 degrees, it may have seen its last party for 2026.

“I’m going to have to check it and see, because once it gets to a certain point where it’s melting I don’t want the kids going in there, because I don’t want it falling on them. So at some point we’re going to have to knock it down just for safety,” he said.

Yuhasz said Wright did not want to be interviewed for this article.

Other local media sources have reported on igloo efforts in Lowellville and Campbell.