The bed came in 3 boxes, which seemed small for the size of bed. It took my husband about 1.5-2 hours to put it together. The bed looks really nice. The wood is soft, so I'm not sure that it will look great forever, but we've had it up for 3 months now and it still looks good, despite a couple of minor dings. Our biggest concern is with the trundle face board, which is only held on by 2 screws, one on either side of the bed. You must use the handles to pull out the trundle or I get concerned that the wood will eventually pull out of the screws. If I could change anything about the bed it would be that they could have made the metal frame come up higher so that the outside board on the trundle could screw into 2 places on each side instead of just one.