The futon is beautiful and seems well made and sturdy- time will tell.  However, the color of the wood (butternut) was a lot lighter than pictured.  In fact, it even looks lighter than the natural wood frame pictured.  As stated in many reviews, the directions were a bit tricky as there were two sets.  One set came with the seat setup and the other set came with the arm rests and neither was particularly clear where to start.  With a little ingenuity we were able to put it together fairly quickly.   All in all, I'm pretty happy with the futon.