I really love the amount of spaces for my cats to lounge and climb around in. The style and color as matches my home and looks far better then the standard cat trees. As far as the assembly, it took about 2 hours and after reading some reviews about the difficulty of the assembly I’m offering some tips. First, keep all parts in their labeled bags for ease as you need them. Since these connect just like PVC fittings, I used a rubber mallet to gently hammer each piece into each fitting, that ensures the stability of this cat condo. At some point though as you add the top floors, it is more difficult to do this so, just make sure you push the pieces in as far as you can when connecting them. Also it is very important to pay attention to the diagram was far as the direction the fittings go because your cat condo will go together properly if you do this. I found as long as I payed close attention the the diagram as I was building this, it all went together and is sturdy.