Oh. My. Word!!!!  If you can find another desk that you like almost as much as this one--get it!!!  When I read the reviews for this, I was SURE everyone was overstating the difficulty of assembly.  Yeah... they weren't overstating it!  I'm quite good at assembling things and this one would have had me swearing like a sailor if my kids weren't within earshot!  Let's just say... the top piece is only held on by 8 of the "required" 20 screws and I don't even care!!!  There are no pilot holes for MOST of the places to screw, the angle for screwing in the majority of screws makes it nearly impossible to effectively get the screws in and the directions are a joke!  It looks good and is pretty sturdy--even without all of the screws--so there's that.