Bought this for our weekend cabin and absolutely love it! The color is darker than I thought but actually is a nice contrast to the natural wood walls. It took many hours for my husband and I too assemble and we both got a workout doing it. Some of the instructions were confusing and we made a few mistakes, but I enjoy assembling furniture so we made the best of it. You do need to be careful not to crack the wood when assembling and the two boxes it ships in are extremely heavy.