I’ve been looking for a wooden kitchen for Busby for a while now – she loves imagination play and I knew she’d love to have her own mini-kitchen! So when I was asked to choose something from the ASDA Direct wooden toy range I knew exactly what we’d be reviewing: the Plum Boston Wooden Kitchen!
Firstly, how easy was it to put together? I usually ask Nick to do these sorts of tasks for me as I don’t possess a huge amount of patience, but he was busy with other jobs on the day we were going to assemble so I decided to do it myself. The instructions state “45 minutes” to assemble.
It took me just over three hours.
The instructions are mostly straightforward, and the parts labelled, but a couple of the stickers had come off very similar looking parts, which then meant I had to unscrew and rescrew a number of times. The hobs and any other plastic parts, were incredibly fiddly to attach, and I would say this is what took the most time (and got me cursing the most).
Once the kitchen was together it looked fantastic! I like the chic, clean white design – which is wonderfully gender neutral. Busby couldn’t wait to play with it when she came downstairs for breakfast the next morning, and hasn’t stopped playing with it since. She loves pretending to bake cakes for us and it keeps her entertained for ages.
The twist-dials are a lovely addition to the kitchen, as are the twist-taps, and she really enjoys pretending to set the oven and wash her hands (and wash-up!). The cupboards have safety catches which mean that once they are closed, they’re not going to suddenly spring open again.
The Plum Boston Wooden Kitchen comes with a wooden frying pan, wooden casserole pot and four utensils, which is great as a lot of the wooden kitchens on the market don’t have any extras. We’re looking forward to adding to her collection for her impending birthday and Christmas.
There are a couple of small niggles about the kitchen which have annoyed me:
1) The plastic hobs are rather flimsy, and Busby has already managed to break some of the plastic off them.
2) We were missing one screw from the box.
3) The nuts of the sides of the cupboards don’t screw that tightly, and the wrench is pretty useless at tightening them.
Overall, I think the Plum Boston Wooden Kitchen is a lovely product, and it’s also a great price at £75 (reduced from £149.97). The hours that Busby has already spent playing with it far outweigh my niggles, and I’m looking forward to many more imaginary cakes!
Hannah
