First, I will say that the finished product is great. Sturdy and my daughter loves it. HOWEVER, based on the assembly alone, I would have rated it a 1. The assembly was the worst I have experienced, and I have assembled a lot more furniture than average through an early retail job and personal purchases. The last reviewer said over 4 hours. Ours was well over 6. I guess we should not have been surprised since step one tells you to attach X,Y,Z to the "previously assembled pieces." The orientation of every single piece is critical, but they are not detailed. You just have to guess from a very bad drawing. The orientation of the pieces are often counter-intuitive and are not even all detailed in the instructions! You just get to step 7 and realize that the needed piece was added to the drawing (without mention) on step 3. Several times we had to disassemble to rearrange the pieces. I wanted to go with a mostly metal product for stability AND reduced risk of broken pieces. So we'll ignore that a key piece was broken on delivery because that was on the delivery driver. Luckily, it was the very top board on the headboard/shelf so we can add it when it arrives. The problem is that it will arrive in a week and a half (they would not expedite my request)!

My daughter loves the bed but the assembly and instructions were awful. The instructions were not clear at all. It took over 4 hours to assemble