KidKraftWooden Dollhouse Shimmer Mansion for 12" Dolls

This review is on the KidKraft Shimmer Mansion Doll House. This thing is absolutely huge! Once assembled, it is over 5 feet tall and over 4.5 feet wide. It is taller than my daughter who is about 4 feet tall. The house is about a foot deep. It has a garage (in which a Barbie convertible fits perfectly), exercise room, office, elevator, bathroom, living room, patio, a kitchen/dining room, 3 seasons room with a hot tub, and a bedroom loft with open staircase. The dollhouse is constructed of wood and pressboard rather than the plastic that the competing “Dream House” is made of (and it costs less!). It comes with all of the furniture you need and I love that the accessories are almost all wood rather than plastic. It is very sturdy and well constructed. The walls, floors, and ceiling have beautiful details printed on them such as wood planks, rugs, wallpaper, decorations, and more. For Included furniture there is a couch, ottoman, beanbag chair, end table, desk with chair and laptop, kitchen table and chairs, fridge cupboard, patio grill, house plant, a cat with a bed and food bowl, ceiling fan, treadmill, yoga mat, bed with mattress and pillows, bathroom sink, huge soaking tub, toilet that flushes, and a living room floor lamp that actually turns on (and automatically turns off a minute later to save batteries). The flushing toilet and light-up floor lamp came with batteries included in them. The dollhouse comes completely in pieces, and every single little piece needs to be put together. Assembly takes a long time. Don’t try to do it with kids waiting to play with it! It took my husband and I about 5 hours total. The most annoying part of assembly was tediously peeling all the film off the front and back of the windows- It only came off in small pieces and took forever. The house comes in a large, 50+lb flat box and comes with all of the hardware needed. An Allen wrench was included but we needed a screwdriver and a 2nd Allen wrench to get it together. The instruction booklet was decent with numbered pictures, and each piece in the box has a numbered sticker on it so you can follow along with the instructions. There were a few instances where the pictures were confusing, but we figured it out. I’m not sure how you could possibly assemble it alone. There were many times when I needed to hold something while he lined something else up, or he needed to tilt the whole heavy thing backward 45 degrees so I could get underneath, etc. If you really have assembly troubles, there is an app you can download on your phone which supposedly has more detailed instructions, but we did not use it. It took about 5 hours total from the time we opened the box until it was completely ready. We assembled it after my daughter was in bed and surprised her with it on Christmas morning. She spent the entire day playing with it for hours at a time. Since then, she’s spent any free play time she gets playing with it, even when she doesn’t have any playmates to share it with. It’s so nice to find a toy which uses her imagination and will keep her entertained for hours without involving any screens or electronics! Her Barbie dolls fit perfectly in the house and on the furniture. The only part she has trouble with is the elevator. It’s hard for her to push up and down. I wish we could figure out a way to make it slide up and down easier. This mansion retails for over $200, however I got it for $89.00 on Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend and while I don’t know if I could stomach the price tag at over $200, I definitely feel $150 or less is a great price and well worth it. It is a well-made quality toy which will be played with for years to come. I’ll admit, even at 30+ years old I play with it now and then! Any child would be lucky to have it.

***UPDATE REVIEW***I don't even think it's been a year and the house is falling apart. The barn doors have fallen off the hinges and don't align well to shut, some of the paneling along the back continuously falls off. It's kind of become an eye sore in her room, but it is still a nice sized doll house, just wish it would hold up to the daily play. My daughter still loves it.We bought this dollhouse for our daughter a few weeks ago and it's been sitting in the garage waiting for one of us to put it together. I spent the better part of yesterday putting it together, but that doesn't bother me. I like putting these projects together and the look on my kids face as it's going up was priceless.What you should know:The house is big, very big. The pictures don't do it any justice. It's not super wide though so I'm not worried it won't fit in her room.Follow the assembly instructions on Bilt AND the manual. This will make your life sooooo much easier. Like I said, this piece was time consuming to put together but take your time and follow the instructions, you'll be fine.You'll need a phillips head and an allen wrench (wrench provided). Note: All of the hardware is neatly organized for you!All of the pieces are numbered so I made sure all of the numbers were visible as I laid them out on the floor. A bit of organization from the start will help out big time.Barbie's fit perfectly. No need to buy new dolls, unless you want to.Personally, I love this house. The box came in perfect condition. The pieces are flawless - no damage at all. Highly recommend this house.

This dollhouse is so cool, so cute, it has so many rooms for your child to do so many different activities with her dolls in; especially if she has an imagination like my daughter lol. One thing I will say is that it was very time consuming, so I would definitely set aside 2 to 3 hours out of your day to build this. I did it by myself and I really had no problem following the directions; I used both the paper and the app instructions and it was a breeze. It is very tedious having screw and make sure you put in the specific screws for that hole, but overall the directions were very clear. I received all the pieces needed, there were a few pieces that had chips but not enough to really notice unless you know it's there, so I didn't really have a problem with that.The one thing I didn't like were the window pieces, they come with a brown sheet that you have to peel off, and I feel like that was the hardest part of putting everything together.It is nice and sturdy, dimly lit, but some stick on lights will work wonders. All of the accessories are great, love the working light and toilet; One thing that I think it's overlooked in a lot of children toys is the mirrors that are included; I have to say I absolutely love this mirror because it's like looking in actual mirror, you can actually see a reflection and it's not blurred or obscured in any kind of way it's awesome.It is a very big dollhouse, my suggestion is to build it in wide open space because there are a couple parts during the build where you have to lay it down to actually get to where the screws need to be places, so definitely have the space. My daughter loves it and hasn't stopped playing with it since her birthday party. Definitely worth the money I paid for it!

This thing is sturdy and so cute. Kind of tall for younger kids. I think it's like 4 1/2 ft and my little one is a foot shorter than that. Lol. But way worth the price. Better than the dream house that's made of cheap plastic. It was also pretty easy to assemble. Took awhile but I would suggest putting the boards in piles of 10s, 20s, 30s to make it easier and just look at the pic on your phone to ease your mind that you're putting it together right.