First let me say that the color in person does not match the color as shown in the picture on the website. I work in the furniture/design industry an am well-aware of the variation from piece to piece, so I understand that no two pieces are going to be identical. That being said, it was a completely different finish than shown. The pictures on the website show a bleached piece with an ash undertone. What arrived had orange undertones and was more golden/honey than what is shown in the picture. Despite this, I liked the nightstands and am keeping them but I wanted to write a review to let people know in advance that this piece is going to have more warmth than shown on the website.
I suppose had I read the fine print I would have known that these were not arriving assembled, but I didn't so that caught me by surprise. It wasn't putting them together than was the headache though...it was getting them out of the box!!! Wow these were package tightly. Took a great deal of effort and patience to unpackage them. You will be breaking down boxes for your recycling for weeks.
The actual assembly of these are pretty straight-forward. Once you do the first one, the second will go faster. I think it took me about 30 minutes to put the second one together and 45 to put the first one together.
Now on to the quality, they were a little banged up on the edges of a few of the shelves. This didn't bother me much for two reasons; 1. the finish on the piece looks time worn to begin with so it blended in and was hardly noticeable when you step back and look at the piece as a whole. 2. These nightstands are $250 and for the price and for furniture made in Vietnam, these are pretty darn impressive. I can't tell you how many times I've had issues with $1200 nightstands from high end furniture stores, so considering what I paid for these, I thought it was pretty good overall. However, I had been considering purchasing these in white and I am so glad that I didn't. Any dings or imperfections would have been highlighted in a painted finish versus this type of finish. So glad I went with this finish.
The little pencil drawer is hard to open but I think it will loosen up over time, although I don't really anticipate using that feature much.
