The reviews saying that assembly was a pain, they're completely true. Screwing into metal sides and legs was hard enough, but some of the holes weren't exactly aligned which made things even harder to tighten. At first, I thought I was doing something wrong until I read the struggle that others had. The table's completely sturdy if you can manage to get the screws in there far enough though and it looks great! It CAN be assembled by yourself, but it certainly takes a lot longer. Overall it looks amazing, is sturdy, and the lift top works really well, you'll just need to set aside some time to actually assemble it properly :)