Overall we like it. More importantly, the kids like it and they play with it often so far. I have a 3 year old daughter and a 5 year old son and they both seem to be having fun.
Pros: The kids have fun while playing with it and it seems to foster imaginary play, which is nice. It's made of relatively good quality materials. It's still "just a toy" but in terms of the wood components (compressed fiberboard) it's in that area above other toys and below cheap "real" furniture. There are good details here like opening doors, clicking knobs, a paper towel rack, a chalk board and shelves that are removable. Overall it's great.
Cons: The assembly was a pain. Schedule a good 3-5 hours...don't wait until 1am on Christmas Eve to get this thing together. The package is heavy and when it's all together it's very big and unsurprisingly, it's still very heavy. The instructions are mostly clear, but still a step or two below what you would find from IKEA.
Some details are missing in the instructions, but here are some helpful hints: there are brown screws and silver screws. Make sure all of the brown screws are up against the brown wood and save the silver screws for the interior pieces. When you first open it, it seems rather daunting, but you get the hang of it after a while. I used a power drill, even though I'm sure the instructions say not to. Definitely use one - it's probably the difference between a 3 hour assembly and a 5 hour assembly. Just put your drill on a low torque setting to avoid over tightening. Place the big knobs on the oven side and the small knobs on the stove side (unlike me). All of the screws and components you need are nicely labeled, but they are very hard to get out of the package. Despite the perforations to make it easy to get the screws out of the package, I ended up cutting myself trying to get it open. It comes with a safety mount to mount it too the wall so it doesn't tip over. I'm sure this is great, but by the time you finish putting this thing together, you're too exhausted to think about actually mounting it into place.
The only thing that really matters is how your kids like it...and mine do, so that makes me happy.
