The wood is a little softer than I thought is would be.  I don’t get the feeling it will last very long when it is exposed to the weather of the pacific northwest, which is where I live.  The instructions are pretty bad. I started out following the directions but realized pretty quickly that they were confusing and that I had already made mistakes after only 4 steps of instruction, which is when I stopped using the directions, unassembled the stuff I had already done and put it together by using the picture and then sort of puzzling it out. I have put a lot of furniture and such together and so it wasn’t difficult for me to figure out what went where but I think if someone were assembling it trying to use the instructions they could get pretty frustrated.  On a different note, it looks just like it does in the picture and if it holds up to the weather, I will be quite pleased.  My main complaint?  Putting the thing together was a pain--because the instructions are so bad.