The completed product is really quite attractive, and it's large enough to hold all kinds of things in the various spaces. Being made of laminated MDF, the shelves are quite heavy, and surprisingly sturdy if you're careful to tighten the screws fully. The finish looks better than many similar kinds of shelves; it's a slightly pebbly-textured vinyl-type laminate (definitely not wood-grained) that seems fairly easy to clean. Those are the positive features of this shelf. But there are a lot of negatives! First of all, the "instructions" (diagrams) indicate this should take about 30 minutes to put together. It took me about 45 minutes just to get the pieces out of the box and try to remove the blizzard of crumbly cheap Chinese styrofoam pieces that exploded into my house before I drug the whole thing outside. Billions of little white dots now blanket my back yard--sorry, environment. Once I got most of them removed from the various pieces, I noticed that in several places, the laminated surface had been scratched or peeled off--however, those spots weren't in highly visible areas, so I was able to touch them up with a black marker. Then, as is the case with many unassembled shelving units, there were lots of screws (30) that had to be tightened with a short, flimsy allen key, which is provided. [I consider the allen key to be an insidious instrument of torture for someone like me with arthritis, and personally think whoever invented this device should be sentenced to life without access to any tools except one of those worthless pieces of crud. But at least they're marginally better than cam bolts.] That part took about 90 minutes. Then, once I'd destroyed my poor hands tightening the 30 screws, there were 30 ugly screw-heads showing all over the place. They do provide 30 little plastic caps to insert over the screws, but then you've got 30 black bumps sticking out all over, definitely detracting from the overall appearance of the shelving unit. I decided to forgo the bumps and painted each of the screw heads with that trusty black marker once the unit was assembled, and it's a much better look overall. But the fun was just beginning. There is no template for hanging the unit on a wall, but there's a diagram showing the distance between the 3 holes for hanging in the back. However, the measurements are in an interesting hybrid of inches and metric (14.57 inches--really??), and they're backwards! Yes, if you drilled holes and set the anchors using the diagram provided, you would have put the middle hole about 7" to the left of where it actually belongs. Of course, the anchors provided are total garbage, so you'd probably have to re-do them anyway. Fortunately, we did spot the discrepancy before drilling; unfortunately, the holes on the back of the shelf for hanging weren't cut very cleanly, so more manipulations and maneuvering were required before the unit was actually hung on the wall. Because of the odd spacing of the hangers, we were only able to put one screw into a stud, and had to supply our own heavier-duty anchors for the remaining two. The process of mounting the shelf to the wall was a real headache, and ended up taking another hour. Since these shelves are very heavy, even with nothing on them, I'm leery of putting much additional weight on them with only one of the hangers in a stud. So much for the glass items I'd been intending to display there. Yes, I do like the look of the finished product...but if I could do it all over again, I probably wouldn't. But if you're willing and able to go through this much effort and aggravation, I'd say this shelf unit is probably a decent buy. Just know what you're getting into!