We just bought our first house and it is tiny! There is no real dining area and the living room is pretty small. Eating dinner together every night as a family is really important to us, so I wanted to find a way to have a real dedicated space for that. This fits perfectly in our space and the storage under the seats is definitely an added bonus. My mom and I put it together in about 3 hours, with some supervision from my dad (and my 4 year old trying to help ). Its solid wood but not as heavy as I expected it to be. It is unfinished so I added a couple of coats of a satin finish poly and its working great!