LEGO Creator 31009 Small Cottage 3in1

Ever since I was little I always loved the idea of having a LEGO street. A miniature world I could immerse myself into. Last year we were lucky enough to find a few of the older LEGO Creator 3in1 house sets reduced massively, so I bought a few with my birthday money and I went home a happy person.

This set may be a little harder to find now, but I did find it in many of the larger shops online still, although it's currently unavailable from LEGO.com

Set 31009 the Small Cottage is one of the smaller Creator house sets, with only  271 parts, yet it can still be built into 3 very different and interesting models. 

The smallest model is a very small cottage.

There's a fairly standard rough 1/3 of the footprint taken by the building. A rail in the garden for the skateboarder, a fireplace and chimney, and actual furniture!  

And somewhat surprisingly for such a compact model, it's hinged. 

It's tiny, but it ticks all of the boxes. Very easy and quick to build, and a very rewarding little house which really showcases how simplicity can be beautiful.

The second model (increasing in size and difficulty of build) is the Windmill.

This build has a hinged wall and removeable top section for easy access inside the windmill.

My nearly 5 year old wanted to try this build, and he made a very good attempt. The instructions look really easy to us, but actually to a 4 year old lots of bricks the same is really tricky because we can count and estimate very quickly already, whereas they can't. Excluding the sails though, he built the windmill by himself.

The third and biggest build is the Small Cottage.

It is still very small, and if I'm honest wasn't really much bigger inside than the first build, with similar furniture. It does however have a removeable top section and a hinged wall like the windmill, and a couple of nice little touches.

There's a nice lamp on a 'table' in the house, a great little barbeque built into the wall outside, and sliding patio doors that really work.

I really like this set because it's great value for money. The rrp was £24.99 and I've actually found it on sale today for prices from £14.99-£32.99 plus postage, so it pays to shop around. The patio doors are awesome, the windmill really different and actually the tiny cottage is so much into such a small package that it's pretty cute.

It works as a playset and is a really sturdy and rewarding build. It's a great starter model and perfect if you don't wish to commit a lot of money or time to LEGO at that point.