I highly recommend watching the company's assembly videos (about 20 minutes long) on YouTube before starting to put this together. It helped immensely. Even so, with two people it took about 12 hours, with as small assist from a third person during a particularly tricky part. So while the assembly is certainly not simple, the product itself it really nice. Solid and good-looking on the back porch. Just had a first rain and it stayed water tight. Good value for the money-- I'm sure we'll get many years of enjoyment out of it.