All Fixed Up : Elvis Impersonator to Move Back Into Restored Mini-Graceland Damaged by Northridge Quake

All shook up. Now, nearly rebuilt.

In the two years since the earthquake damaged his replica Graceland Mansion in Northridge, Elvis Presley impersonator “Danny U” has stayed on the road or with relatives.

But with repairs to the Georgia-style mansion nearly done, the 41-year-old faux Elvis has checked out of heartbreak hotel and is heading home.

“I finished it one time and I’m going to do it again,” said Danny U, whose real name is Daniel Uwnawich.

The three-bedroom, two-bath house is a scaled-down replica of Graceland. It includes some of the King’s favorite toys: a heart-shaped swimming pool, an upstairs ballroom and a 1956 Cadillac Eldorado in the driveway.

He first completed the house he calls Melody Land in 1991. Before the earthquake, several hundred people came to see the house on the two days a year he opened it to tours.

Uwnawich said living at Graceland, or a reasonable facsimile, “was always my dream.” He plans to finish work at his mini-mansion by the 19th anniversary of Presley’s death on Aug. 17 so fellow Elvis enthusiasts can tour it.

He says he wants to add an Elvis museum, a disco room and a pond on the one-acre property.

Uwnawich said he started impersonating Elvis while still a teenager in Louisiana, finally meeting his idol in 1973 at a Las Vegas hotel while both were performing in town. “Back then I was the only one doing Elvis, except for Elvis himself,” he said.

He moved to California in 1976.

In 28 years as an Elvis impersonator, Uwnawich has traveled throughout the country, armed with his sideburns, jumpsuits and 22-piece band. Along with investments, he said, he has earned enough through the Elvis gigs to pay for the 8,000-square-foot, $1.5-million house that he finished in 1991.

“It was for California people who have never seen Graceland in Memphis,” he said.

The house’s front gates were used in the movie “Elvis and Me,” Danny U said. He said he was also one of the actors who portrayed Elvis in some of the scenes.

A stickler for accuracy, Uwnawich keeps the living room furniture covered with plastic, just like at Graceland.

In the back and front yards he parks five of Elvis’ favorite classic cars, including a 1971 Corvette. He also has a Great Dane dog he named King that matches Presley’s pets of the same breed named Snoopy and Brutus.

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King’s king-size doghouse in a corner of the backyard was about the only structure on the property that didn’t break during the Northridge quake.

Inside, the chandeliers came crashing down, marble and glass shattered, and house walls cracked.

In all, damage was estimated at about half a million dollars, Uwnawich said.

Uwnawich plans to reinstate the twice-a-year tours of the house on Presley’s birthday, Jan. 8, as well as the anniversary of his death.

After the house was rendered uninhabitable, he occasionally returned to stay with family in Toluca Lake, between the long tour through the South.

Repairs, including a fresh coat of white paint for the inside and outside of the house, should end in the next three weeks, Danny U said.

The tours, his career, the house--all of it, he says, has been “to honor Elvis.”