Questions at the table

Laser-cut MDF and card sheets, pre-finished dollhouse furniture parts, fabric and paper, glue, a pair of tweezers, transparent plexiglass for the front, an LED light wire and a battery pack, plus a step-by-step booklet with photographs. The only things we do not put in the box are batteries and a clear table.

Fiddly rather than hard. Nothing requires a skill you do not already have — if you can thread a needle and follow a numbered diagram, you can build one. The difficulty is in the patience: small parts, thin glue lines and a lot of waiting for things to dry.

A single room takes most people six to twelve hours, usually spread over two or three evenings. A tin kit can be done in an afternoon. A three-storey dollhouse with a garden and several light circuits is a month of weekends, and we think it is better that way.

Yes, as long as you start with a small room rather than a villa. Our single-room creative room kits and the tin box kits are the gentlest way in. Build one of those first and the bigger house will feel routine.

Fourteen and up. The parts are small enough to swallow, the knife and tweezers are genuinely sharp, and the instructions assume an adult reading level. Younger children enjoy the finished house enormously; the building is not for them.

The wood is laser-cut MDF, the clear front is plexiglass rather than glass, and the lighting runs on low-voltage batteries. A finished kit kept out of direct sun and damp will sit on a shelf for years. Paper and fabric elements fade if you put them in a south-facing window.

That is what it is for. Most of our room kits come with a transparent dust cover, the book nooks are designed to slot between real books, and the storybook kits fold shut when you want the shelf tidy. Keep the battery pack reachable and change the batteries once a year.

Keep the booklet and the box, and write to us at the address on our contact page with a photograph of the sheet the part came from. We cut replacement parts in the workshop and send them on. Nothing in a kit is irreplaceable.