Great showcase when people come over and see it. They're stay in awe!

Not happy with this product.

My wife and I are considering building a house. As a first step, we decided to read up on the subject, and the kits offered by Pitsco seemed like a fun way to gain some scaled (ba-dum-dum!) practical experience with home framing.

On the upside, the kit comes with nearly everything you'll need:
- Tons of balsa wood, with pre-cut studs.
- An impressive lumber cutter that does a good job of protecting tiny fingers.
- Detailed building/framing plans.
- As a beginners kit, the plans are made to scale. This allows you to double-check your work by simply laying the walls on the drawing.

On the downside, there are some problems:
- The pre-cut studs are all about 2" short based on the scale. This means short walls, and a need to constantly adjust your trimmers to suit. It also means the scale plans no longer fit your walls on the y-axis.
- The plans are made to scale, and you should be able to double-check the measurements with the provided architects scale. You can do this, but you'll generally find the (scale) measurements to be off by about half an inch.
- The (scale) measurements for the headers are all 4" short.
- The plans refer to 2"x4" lumber as 2'x4'. It's an obvious typo, and it speaks to the sloppiness with which this product was assembled.

Tip:
- If you buy this kit, it recommends getting a hammer for nailing. I've found that just pushing the pin in with the eraser of a #2 pencil is more than sufficient. An actual hammer would probably just end up damaging the balsa wood in this kit.

As for my review, I've decided to give the kit 2 stars thus far. Here's why:
- I do believe that I'll pick up the framing concepts I'm interested in - Starts them off at 5 Stars
- The pre-cut lumber is short. I was only going to take one star off for this, but at second thought, this is fairly annoying. -2 Stars.
- Header measurements are off because they don't take the trimmer widths into account, 2"x4" typos, measurements in general aren't exactly precise. -1 Star.

Thus far, I've only worked through the first couple of walls based on the recommended path. I'll post updates as I proceed through the kit.

Great product. Some wood was missing but manufacturer sent it to me after I contacted them. Would have been nice if the kit were complete because it was supposed to be a spring break project for my son. Oh well, now it is a summer break project.

have been in the building business 40 years. my wife gave me the pitsco house framing kit for xmas. I did the hip roof version,loved it.