Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Bought this coffee house model for my 10-year-old, who has a fondness for tiny things and dollhouses. Don’t get this for your 10-year-old, even if you think their attention to detail is masterful, and their coordination is superb. You’ll still be helping them with this project until next Christmas. If you’re lucky. Take a good, hard, close up view of this product’s pictures. Everything is made of paper, beads, and tiny, pre-cut pieces of wood. The only thing pre-assembled in the whole coffee house kit were the two tiny coffee cups. Gotta say, wasn’t expecting that. I WAS expecting punch-outs, stickers, and little miniature pre-molded food and dish items to glue in place to ooh and ahh over. What I got was hours and hours of cutting out each and every extremely detailed and intricate paper items, then more hours of attempting to fold and glue microscopic tabs to assemble them, while trying to avoid cramping fingers clenching down and squishing said intricate paper items. The kit comes with picture directions, which are not terribly difficult to follow, but the real winner which saved our rears was the true-to-size diagram of the parts list. Reference this often to save your sanity. Even if you think you have the correct Piece A to glue permanently to Piece B, check it against the parts diagram first. You’re welcome. All of these surprises aside, this is a fun, if taxing project to work on with my daughter. It is difficult folding and gluing the tiny paper pieces. The tools in the kit are adequate, but I’m thankful we bought our daughter an additional crafting tool kit. The scissors in this kit will have you wanting to amputate your fingers after the fourth cutout. The paper pieces are flimsy. This is why I didn’t give the kit a 5-star rating. The frame and cabinet/table pieces are pretty sturdy compared to the paper. I can’t rate the ease or quality of the wiring portion of the kit, as we won’t be getting to that for another decade or so at the rate we’re going. We’ve been working on this for a couple of hours now. We have the first two pages of instructions in the accompanying booklet completed, with too tiny, adorable, quaint display cabinets that go in the far back of the actual shop. Probably a good thing, since we’re still practicing our underwater basket weaving. All in all a good buy for an extended rainy day project. For an adult. With young eyes. And dexterous fingers.