Lego Compatible Funwhole Lakeside Lodge FH9004 Building Set Review

Welcome back to It's Not Lego, my little space on the web that looks at all of the latest building block sets and brands coming out of China.

Today, we'll be doing a review of the Funwhole Lakeside Lodge, set number is FH9004 with 1969 pieces and it even includes a light kit standard with the building.

Now available on Amazon. Or you can purchase it directly from the Funwhole website.   Find my special code at the bottom of this blog post to get an extra 10% off their website pricing.

The Lakeside Lodge is reminiscent of a fishing lodge that sits on the water's edge. It has a main floor that consists of a cozy living room and well equipped kitchen.  There is a nice loft space on the second floor that accomodates a bedroom complete with fireplace.  

Funwhole is a relatively new building block brand that is making a mark in the Lego space. According to their website, they've been around since 2014 but only recently started to market building sets, focusing on unique design and innovation.  Unlike other brick brands, all of the Funwhole kits come with lighting included in the price of the set.

This is my second Funwhole set, the first being the rustic Wood Cabin set FH9001, which I had a lot of fun building.  You can find my review of it here.  I did an in-depth review of their lighting kit on the Wood Cabin set, so I won't be reviewing the lighting in this post.  Just know that the lighting kit in the Lakeside Lodge works the same way.

I want to point out that there are a lot of brick brands out there right now, but it all comes down to their customer service and whether they stand behind their product. I had some issues with my kit and Funwhole customer service came through with flying colours more than once! (We will discuss in detail later).

It's so great that Funwhole shipped me the Lakeside Lodge building set in the original box.  The presentation and the pictures on the box are really nice.

Also included is a very thick and detailed instruction manual, and a small sticker sheet.   

Additionally, there are four resealable envelopes that contain all the lighting components to make the Lakeside Lodge extra special.  

The large instruction manual makes it easy to follow the steps, but I will say however, it's sometimes difficult to ascertain the right colour of the pieces because there are different colours of browns, tans and greens in this set.  In that case, I usually take a stab at it and hope for the best.

The Lakeside Lodge has a standard 32x32 stud footprint but instead of one single baseplate the foundation is composed of 4 16x16 plates.  Although not required, I constructed a MILS base underneath to make the flooring more rigid and easier to handle.  This is something that I've started doing to all of my modular buildings, so it's not due to any deficiency of this set in particular.

To build the set, there are six major steps and there are six bags of parts pertaining to each step.  Within each of the large numbered bags, there were several smaller bags of parts.

As I started to build, I noticed that there was something odd about the bags of parts I had received in step 1.  There was a duplication of some bags and missing others which prevented me from continuing the build.  

I took pictures of the bags I had and contacted Funwhole customer service through an Instagram DM.  They were very quick to respond and we figured out which bags were missing from the set.

Here's a complete breakdown of the component bags by section that Funwhole sent to me.  I was missing bags 1.1-3 and 1.1-4.  Funwhole immediately shipped out the missing parts to me, and I received them right after the chinese Golden Week holiday.

With the missing bricks in hand, I started making progress again.  As you can see from the above picture, the Lakeside Lodge set is a building that is located next to the water's edge.  I added some of my own minifigures just for fun.  As a reminder, there are six steps to the construction and this completes section 1.  Time to move on to section 2.

And then just as I thought everything was smooth sailing, this happened.  It looks like one of the parts bag had a bad accident and several of the pieces inside suffered some damage.

I let Funwhole know and within a week and a half, I had replacement bricks sent to me, quickly and painlessly.  Needless to say, I was really pleased with Funwhole's communication and promptness.

With the completion of section 2, the main structure of the Lakeside Lodge is apparent.

The interior consists of two rooms, the kitchen and the living room.  The kitchen features two cooktops, a fan hood, a coffee maker, a sink and loads of cupboards.

 The living room sports  couch with side table, TV and grandfather clock.  Behind the couch one finds a rack with hat, jacket and boots.  There's a small foyer which leads to the front door of the lodge.

Before we move on to the second floor, now's a good time to test the lighting on the main floor.  There's some accent lights in the water and one on the fishing dock.

There's several more lights inside and outside of the lodge as well.

Funwhole provides a battery pack and all of the lights and wiring, you just need to supply two double AA batteries to power the lights.

Jumping ahead to section 3, we have now completed the second floor bedroom.  In addition to the single bed, there is a side table, a bookshelf and a chair and desk with lamp.  The red light brick in the middle of the room will serve as a fireplace in an upcoming step.

Here's how the Lakeside Lodge is shaping up before we move on to section 4.

Section 4 sees the completion of one side of the rooftop and dormer window.

A tree with colourful leaves rises from the ground.

Section 5 builds some more of the side roof panels.

Section 6 finishes off the roof and chimney.  And with that, the Lakeside Lodge is finished!   Time to take it all in.

I gotta say that this set really pops with the lighting.  Some bonus shots follow.

The Funwhole Lakeside Lodge does not come with any minifigures, but it sure brings life to the set if you add your own.

So in summary, the Funwhole Lakeside lodge is 1969 pieces and rated for ages 8 and above as per the box and manual information.  The set bundles in a great lighting kit that if purchased separately would probably cost at least $30 to $40 more. 

Funwhole uses the same lighting system as Briksmax.  For a detailed primer of how the lighting kits work, please check out my blog post here.

It comes with a sticker sheet (which I didn't use) and a really thick instruction manual.  Although there wasn't any page numbers, there were a total of 555 steps spread out over 6 sections.  Bonus tools include a brick separator and tweezers to pick up those small pieces.

I had some really bad luck in that my set was missing parts and also had deformed parts. But Funwhole made it right with their excellent communication and super quick replacement of the affected parts.

Want to add the Funwhole Lakeside Lodge FH9004 to your brick collection?  You can find it on Amazon. Or you can purchase it directly from the Funwhole website.

Because I've partnered with Funwhole, they are offering a further 10% off your purchase price by using code ITSNOTLEGO at checkout.   How great it that?

 Thanks for visiting and see you next time!  Bye!