The Stickers! There were so many to place. I wasn't expecting it. In hindsight, I should have known I would have had to place stickers as most of these toy products always have stickers. Fine. Whatever, but why did you have to include stickers for the assessaries, too? Ugh. That was a tad annoying as I had to find the desinated item for the stickers in the millions of little bags between all the pieces....
I'm not going to lie: this took forever to put together. Not only did I have to find the correct pieces, but I, also, constantly compared them to the picture to make sure I was on the right path. I'm not sure if i was just overwhelmed by the number of pieces or if it was the fact that NONE of the pieces were organized. I don't know why i just assumed it would be like putting together a Lego kit, but it definitely was not. I'm pretty sure, though, I was overwhelmed by all the PINK when I opened the box. After a minute of digging in, EVERYTHING started looking the same. Honestly, the box could have been a tiny bit more organized. I was opening pieces from totally different areas of the instruction booklet just to get the one I needed for the area I was building. After a while of doing this, of course, the parts were spreading out all over the place, and I was running out of space to even build the ever growing house. It was worth it in the end, though, as my kid absolutely adores her new doll house. This was actually meant to be a Christmas gift, so naturally, she doesn't have any barbies to play with yet. However, kids are way more creative than most give them credit for. This child just pulled out their Spiderman toys and really any plastic toy and started playing. They even started pulling out their paints (because I'm an enabler parent who refuses to stomp out any creative idea) to "change the color of the water."
On a side note, if you're going to add water to the pool, be prepared for a mess that would make the rain jealous. Also, don't be an enabler parent. You'll regret every idea you help generate with this thing.
For one giant house (it's about 4 ft tall and just as wide) made of plastic, it's pretty sturdy. I wouldnt recommended leting your kid climb it, of course, but the pieces are well snapped into place. even the palm tree at the very tippidy top would need some force to push it down.
Now, I am a little displeased with the elevator part as that thing is really difficult to get to stay in place long enough for my kid to pretend her friends are coming out of it. It scares me a little every time it hits the floor from the top floor. Not only because I can just SEE the pieces breaking off every time, but, also, because with just the two of us (the kid and I) its usually relatively quiet so the suddenness is a bit of a shock to the system. I keep running in to make sure nothing bad happened.
Other than that, I have no real complaints. The doll house looks amazing. It's big, which is what I wanted when I was looking for one.