These look lovely and have been the perfect solution for tidying up our previously open shelved storage in our basement. Provides excellent storage in a sleek and attractive way. We hired someone to assemble, so cant speak specifically to the ease of assembly one way or the other, but each third of this set probably took him around an hour or so. The middle unit obviously took a little bit longer than the two outside units. Have only had them for about a week so cant speak to durability and so on, but so far very pleased!