I love this advent tree. The second one I bought. We like these because the kids decorate them to suit their personality. A little paint and stickers and they turn out great. My one suggestion is to write a number on the back of each drawer as you take it out. Some of the slots are a bit different and the wrong drawer won't fit as well. Also the drawers are small. Tiny gifts.

I've looked around for an advent Christmas calendar with drawers that I liked for a while and I am very happy that I bought this one. I just wanted to post a review to let other know that the description says that the drawers are a 1.5" square, but the one I received has drawers that are actually a 2" square (see photo). The insides are 1 6/8" square (see photo). I was happy that they were larger than advertised, but thought others may like to know when making their buying decision.

Arrived with a dent in it because the packaging was hugely inadequate....the box was practically paper thin and was torn in several places. There was no packing material around it at all. Because of time constraints (this was a class art project for a Harvest Faire auction at our son's school) I had to patch the dent with putty and paint over it. The drawers are not uniformly sized and many of them barely slide in and out of the drawer space. I spent many hours sanding them and making them fit. I didn't expect it to be perfect, but the big dent and the cruddy packaging were pretty lame. The drawers not opening and closing smoothly or at all was not fun either. There were even a couple that appeared to have been forced into place and we had to pry them out. Buyer beware. It can be made to work and is probably fairly priced but be prepared.

I found the wood easy to work with and typical of pine. While I agree with a previous reviewer that some of the drawers tended to stick, this was only a case when the drawers where placed in a space different from which was the drawer's original location. Remembering which drawers went where, made the reassembly easy and trouble free.
I made my best friend's two young sons' and advent calender from this wooden advent tree.
I started by sanding everything with first 200 and then 400 grit sandpaper. I applied a staining primer, to prepare the pine to accept the stain evenly. After staining it green and brown, I painted the inside black. My wife selected an array of festive paper covers, which I applied to each drawer with Mod Podge to each drawer. I painted each knob and the edges of drawer frames with silver leaf. Next, we attached numbers to each drawer to represent the countdown from December 1 to December 24. On the back, we printed a bible verse in the shape of the tree and attached it with Mod Podge too. Finally, we signed it from our family.

UPDATE: Someone asked how we put the paper on the drawer faces with the drawer pulls already affixed. Great question. My wife, whose skills with scissors outpaces mine, cut a slit in the paper and carefully cut out a small hole. We dry-fitted all of the paper covers before moving forward with the Mod Podge. I have attached additional photos that show where you can see how she cut the holes. The nice thing is that the Mod Podge "healed" the slit such that the seam is not immediately evident.

As mentioned by others, this does need sanding and I had to use a detail sander on the bottom of a few drawers so they would operate smoothly, but over all I am very pleased with it. I have wanted something like this for some time and was pleased to find it on Amazon. Shipping was very quick and I just finished it tonight so will have it for December 1st