I turned the LEGO Home Alone house into an advent calendar - and created the best Christmas countdown

I have always loved advent calendars. Ever since being a child, the act of opening something and counting down to Christmas has been a highlight. More so if chocolate is involved, but even those re-usable cardboard advent calendars have always fascinated me.

This love of the advent calendar is something that I’ve now handed over to my son. This year, his calendars consisted of LEGO Star Wars and Haribo - which has been a perfect 'before school' ritual for him. I mean, who wouldn’t want to stuff their face full of sweets and build a tiny X-Wing before they’ve had their porridge?

For me, though, there was no advent calendar this year (sob)… so I decided to make my own. Well, I say decided - I stumbled upon the best advent calendar in existence by pure accident.

It was my real job to update Shortlist’s best LEGO sets list before Christmas - tough job, but someone had to do it - and one of the sets I was given to review was the LEGO Home Alone house.

This fantastic LEGO Ideas set is a superb recreation of the house Kevin is left home alone in. Comprising 3,955 bricks it’s packed with Easter eggs from the movie, as well as The Wet Bandits van and treehouse.

Emptying the many packets of LEGO on the floor mid November, ready to do a review, I noticed something. There were, in total, 24 packets.

Now, the number 24 could mean a number of things: I could have created the thing in a 24-hour marathon, doing a packet an hour. But let’s face it, I don’t have the stamina or the willpower to do anything as cool as that.

Spreading the build out over 24 days, though, that was certainly achievable. And there’s no better 24 days in the world, than the days that count down to Christmas. That’s right, I decided that this was going to be my advent calendar. A packet a day, finishing on Christmas Eve - in time to watch Home Alone in my living room, mince pie and sherry in hand.

Now, this was meant to be my advent calendar, given my son has two of his own. But you try telling an eight year old that you are building the house from his favourite Christmas movie, on your own for work. It’s never going to happen, so I enlisted his help and here’s how we got on…

Day 1

• Total build time: 33 mins
• Tantrums: 1

December 1, a Sunday. What a perfect day to start a LEGO build. We open the massive box and get the thick manual out. My son loves the fact that on the front is Kevin’s Battle Plan from the movie, where he outlines just how he is going to attack the robbers. So much so that he won’t give me back the instructions as he wants to stare at it for ages. Finally, I prise it from his hands, he storms off for a few minutes, then we become friends again and get to work.

Immediately, his interest is piqued. The build for the first day is The Wet Bandits van. My son gets to work putting Harry and Marv together, while I build the van. It’s a simple process and we finish the packet in around 30 minutes. The second the van is complete, my son runs off to play with it.

But not before he tells me that the van actually has doors in the movie. But, no matter, as “it’s easier to get the LEGO figures in and out”. I try to explain that it’s not going to be “exactly the same” as we are making the thing from LEGO and he gives me a look as if to say “it bloody better be.”

Days 2-10

• Total build time: 267 mins
• Tantrums: 2

Day 2 is where the house building starts - the whole first floor is contained in packets 2-10. It’s also the day where my son loses a little bit of interest. To be fair, Day 2 is purely about building foundations, but he gets excited when we have to build a spinning axel thing. “I bet that’s for the dance scene, Daddy,” he says.

I try to use this time for a bit of father-son bonding about how I used to have a Michael Jordan vest and how much I used to love basketball, because Channel 4 had the rights and me and my mates would watch the games with a load of ice cream. But it’s soon clear he has no idea who Michael Jordan is, or why he is the person on the train track in that particular scene.

Another spinny thing is constructed and Day 2 turns out to be one of the bigger builds, taking around 40 minutes.

Day 3 and many a basement window needs to be constructed. My son loves doing this, while I start building up the floor and the front porch section of the house.

We may only be a few bags in, but it feels like we are getting somewhere. Then there’s a problem.

Realistically I only have a few hours’ window in the afternoon / early evening to open and build this makeshift advent calendar. This is because he goes to school, I go to work and the morning is taken up with his own advent calendar. This week, I have two after work commitments, so Day 4 and 5 are missed.

This takes us up to a Friday and I tell my son we have a big build to do to catch-up. To keep him invested, we put on a Christmas movie (Nativity!) and he ends up just watching that while I toil away. And toil I do, building for the entirety of the movie and then some. My son helps where he can, but he seems happy to leave me to do the building, while he creates the endless amounts of windows needed for the ground floor.

110 minutes later, the film is finished and my son is up in his room playing with his Star Wars figures. I am five bags down and have three quarters of the walls of the first floor and some stairs to show for it.

I excitedly tell my son that we are up to date but all he wants to know is when the roof will be done. “Not till Day 17,” I tell him. The look in his eyes tells me that I may have lost my building partner.

Build 6-10 is done on my own, when my son is in bed. This was his choice as he explained to me when I was reading him a bedtime story that “he’d rather come down in the morning and inspect my work” than help me build the thing. I now understand why this build was billed for people 18 years and up. The attention span of an eight year old just doesn’t stretch that long.

Mine certainly does and with another 90 minutes’ of build time over four days, I have completed the first floor, complete with moving train set (and that nobody Michael Jordan), a fireplace, Christmas tree and front walls that can be opened up. It looks incredible and my son chipped in with the windows once more, created the Christmas tree and the dining room table and played with Kevin and his sleigh going down the stairs.

Days 11-16

• Total build time: 253 mins
• Tantrums: 1

With floor one complete, it was clear that my son was having more fun seeing the build progress but he was still my window maker and he was ecstatic that the first floor was complete, happy to play with this while I constructed the second floor.

This build was similar to the first floor: foundations first, build up the walls, add the windows. Days 12 and 13 saw the creation of some more stairs (complete with tarantula), the mum and dad’s bedroom (complete with switched off alarm) and the infamous sink where Kevin ‘shaves’ for the first time.

Day 14 and Buzz’s room, complete with falling shelves and gun on the wall, was erected. Those falling shelves made me get into a tantrum, given how fiddly they were, while my son had a lot of fun playing with them - only for me having to put them back together again and again.

Day 15 was skipped because I needed a Sunday off, so the Monday was a double build after work. As I put the finishes to the second floor, some 223 minutes’ of LEGO fun later, my wife ‘had a word’. It turns out, having this much LEGO in the living room over two weeks is starting to test the patience of everyone in the house. I find a hiding place for the massive box and agree to tidy up after myself from now on.

Despite these tailwinds, I persevere. This is no longer an advent calendar, this is my Everest. I am Edmund Hilary and I am going to conquer the peak with or without Tenzing Norgay (who is more interested in playing with his Star Wars figures) by my side.

Day 17-23

• Total build time: 213 mins
• Tantrums: 2

A fever dream. I am in a world that was falling apart, everything crumbling all around me and I can’t put the pieces back together. “Dad!” a shout from my son wakes me up. He seems worried. It turns out that he was ‘playing’ with the house and one of the sides fell off.

I calm him down, tell him that it’s not a problem and it’s just LEGO - “we can fix it!” I say out loud.

Inside I am cursing.

Trying to put back LEGO once it’s constructed is a pain in the proverbials. It turns out that it wasn’t a huge break - though it took up my Day 17 to fix it. So, Day 18 was two builds in one. And it was the day my son was waiting for: the roof! We’re making the roof! Which means we are almost there…

I look down at the page of the manual. No wonder my son was losing patience, we’re 327 pages in and still have a week to go. I mean, George Orwell only needed 110 pages to write Animal Farm. It's fair to say that this thing is EPIC. When I was eight, I got impatient if my Findus Crispy Pancakes were 10 minutes’ late. He’s been waiting nearly three weeks to just have a play with Kevin, the house and the Wet Bandits - at least his play time is now so close.

Days 19-23 go like clockwork. Despite a boozy Christmas lunch and after work drinks meant that I have no real recollection of making Day 19, the roof looked fine and the last build was a fun one: the side building where the utility room is.

Finally, the house was complete! Now, all that was left was the treehouse…

Day 24

• Total build time: TBA
• Tantrums: 0

Okay, I am not going to lie - I have yet to build the treehouse as I had to file this before Christmas Eve to get it published for Christmas Eve. But let’s tell a white lie to keep the magic of Christmas alive and say that I have spent the night before Christmas making Kevin’s perfect getaway from the robbers.

While it didn’t all go to plan, much like Kevin’s Battle Plan, the thought was there. And having the LEGO Home Alone house as an advent calendar this year has been a real joy.

It meant some quality time spent with my son (who has been incredibly patient throughout) and at the end of it, we now have one of the best-ever LEGO Builds in our house to remember the year by.

Now, I know the Home Alone house is expensive. It works out around £10 a day to have it as an Advent Calendar, but it’s been a joyful thing to do - reminding me that Christmas isn’t just about the day itself but about sharing, squabbling and family time. Oh, and bricks. So many bricks.

Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals!

The LEGO Home Alone house is available now from LEGO for £259.99. Or, £10.83 a day for 24 days, if you want to follow in my footsteps.