I can’t believe it’s been over six months since Naomi gave me the reproduction Barbie Dreamhouse for my birthday. I always meant to post some photos of it and I took several of the box and the house but not the furniture which had to be assembled. When I saw how many pieces there were I thought it would be better (and more fun) if I saved it for a day when Naomi would be here to help put it all together.

Time passed and we always seemed to run out of time or have other things to do but finally this afternoon we found ourselves with a couple of spare hours and I said: “Let’s make the Barbie furniture.”

All the furniture pieces were neatly arranged on sheets of card and luckily for us, they included detailed instructions. We decided to tackle the wardrobe and vanity unit first. I took on the task of finding the correct pieces and pressing them out while Naomi dealt with construction.  Naively we thought that we would get the lot done by teatime.

After two hours just to make the wardrobe, vanity, and bookcase unit that goes along the back wall of the house I think that Naomi was ready to debate the “fun to assemble” assertion on the box.  The parts we needed were spread over several sheets of cardboard but my job of finding them was not that difficult. Naomi was trying to follow the instructions to put them together and was forced to call for the aid of a magnifying glass for the tiny numbers. We could not imagine many small children having the patience to do this. Not that it was difficult but very time consuming matching numbers on slots to other slots. Imagine the frustrated mum’s and dad’s assembling it on Christmas Eve or under the watchful eyes of little girls the next day.

By six o’clock the back unit was complete and we decided to call it a day. Naomi went home and I was left to deal with the rest of the house on my own.

In fact, the instructions are quite good but we were unsure whether we were following them correctly at times.  This could easily have been prevented by some subheadings or extra detail on the part labels. We felt that rather than “Wardrobe” and a letter, “Wardrobe base”, “Wardrobe right” etc would have speeded things up a bit. Two parts had us completely baffled as to where they were supposed to go until the end. Luckily nothing needed to be glued together so making a mistake would not be fatal.

In our next post, I will show you my furniture assembly efforts.