Beautiful kit, fragile set
The end result, as always, is beautiful. LMB's kits are just right - not too sparse, not too much. The components are high-quality, and while I didn't need to contact customer service on this kit, I have before and they've consistently gone above and beyond. I only buy my light kits from LMB now and I cannot recommend them highly enough.
With all that said...this was not a fun installation. Sort of out of necessity, the wire bundles and boards go into the core of the tree, replacing the stack of round pieces from the original set. That core is what made aligning the tiers so easy during original assembly, and without that, it's very frustrating to get the studs to line up. You're doing it blind and there isn't a lot of slack on the wires. Once it is finally together, it's REALLY fragile. The core also added a lot of strength to the completed tree. That's gone. If you jostle it too hard, bump the table it's sitting on, or burp too loudly in the same room, it's likely to come apart and now you're looking at another tedious reassembly.
This isn't a failure on the assembly instructions, it's just this set doesn't take well to the required modifications. For this not to happen, the boards would have needed to be stuck to the bottom of the base or the bottom of the tiers, which isn't the clean result that you're accustomed to from LMB. All in all, I'd say give this one a pass unless you have tiny fingers, a saint's patience, and a seismically isolated display case.
| Quality |
Rated 5 out of 5
|
|---|---|
| Design |
Rated 5 out of 5
|
| Ease of Use |
Rated 2 out of 5
|
| Customer Service |
Rated 5 out of 5
|
