My daughter asked for a dolls house last Christmas, as we had already got her presents my parents offered to get it her, it retails at £44.99 in Argos although my dad managed to get in the half price sale right before Christmas so he paid £22 for it!! Bargain! Sometimes letting men wait until the last minute to buy presents does pay off!

Come Christmas morning and my daughter opens this all other presents are flung to one side... I promised to set it up after Christmas dinner after peeking inside and seeing there were quite a lot of screws and fixings inside the box and figured it would be a timely process.

Straight after dinner she asks for the dolls house so off i go to set it up, upon getting everything out of the box disaster strikes....we have too many of some pieces and not enough of others and its Christmas day, Argos isn't open!!!! needless to say we had a distraught 2 year old for a couple of hours until we managed to get her engrossed in all her other new toys!!

Thank god for shops being open boxing day, my dad exchanged it no problem and I set about building it again, all the pieces were present this time! Despite there being lots of pieces of wood, screws and hinges it is surprisingly easy to assemble, it took me about 30 minutes to complete it.

The finished very very pink house comprises of 3 floors, living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and loft space. It comes with all the furniture you would need (all made of wood) including a bed, sofa, TV, fridge, toilet, bath, sinks, tables, lamps and 2 people (one male and one female) it also has a set of stickers to decorate as you please plus fabric duvet, pillows and sofa cover. The front of the house on ours is one big door that opens fully to allow your child to play on the two lower floors of the house although in the Argos catalogue it states it is two doors, I'm unsure as to whether this is the luck of the draw or if we got yet another faulty model but it looks fine and works just the same. The roof piece comes off to allow play in the loft area. The two chimneys are just sat on the top of the house so fall off on a regular basis, especially when removing or replacing the roof piece but they go back on easy enough so its not a huge issue. Finished measurements are H50, W25.5, D57.5cm so it's not massive like it looks in the picture, but it is a good size, ours fits neatly into a corner next to my daughters toy box.

So far with this dolls house we have had two problems, firstly the front of the house has come off twice, the screws are incredibly small so I don't know if it's because they aren't long enough or if its due to it being opened and closed constantly but both times it has gone back on easy enough. Secondly the play fridge door came off, unfortunately the hinges on this snapped (they are only little pieces of wood, not actual metal hinges) so it cannot be fixed unless you are good with woodwork which I'm not! I had to glue it back on so now the fridge door doesn't open, luckily my daughter doesn't mind!

It is almost a year on from her getting this for Christmas and she still plays with it just as much, if not more, as the day she got it, for £22 this was an absolute bargain and definitely my daughters favourite toy! I would say it is worth the £44 full price, we have paid more for things that are forgotten about within a month! It's a classic toy that can stay in the family for years if it is looked after, unlike some of the plastic toys that break within a few days!