I ordered this for my daughter for her apartment and after reading reviews, was concerned that she'd have trouble putting it together. She's 19 and has never put anything like to together before, so I made note of some of the suggestions in case she had trouble.She got it together with no trouble but told me that once it was together, the length from the back to the front was too long so the supports wouldn't fit as they were too short. I thought this was strange and was going to call the company but wanted to wait until I got a chance to see it. Good thing I waited. See, that hardware that so many are complaining about actually serves a purpose. My husband and I went to visit and the first thing I noticed was that the metal hardware was not showing on the front as so many had complained about. That's when I realized that she had put the legs on backward. We took it apart and put it back together properly, (very easy fix by the way) and voila! the rails now fit. Problem fixed.Once we got it all together though we realized that against her very bright white walls, it was getting lost, so we bought some flat black spray paint and painted it. It took about 5 cans. If you decide you want to do that same, make sure you get enough paint so you don't have to send your husband back to the store like we did, (thanks Honey, you're the best!).We put the plastic rail connectors on, which gave the bed some really good support but decided not to put the little plastic things on that fill in the holes, as we figured we'd never be able to remove them and that would make it impossible to take the bed apart. Since my daughter is in college we figure we may have to take this apart to move it in the not too distant future. That being said, it fit though her sliding glass door, fully assembled when I took it outside to spray paint it.I'm not sure why some people had trouble assembling it. My daughter, with the exception of putting the legs on backward which was an easy fix, was able to do it with the instructions provided. A word to the wise though, if the hardware isn't showing on the front, you have the legs on backward.I'd read the reviews about people being upset with the hardware showing, but figured that for the price, for such a sturdy piece of furniture, we'd deal with that, either by deciding it really didn't look that bad, (I had to wait to see it in order to decide) or painting the hardware. Again, for the price, adding in the cost of a little paint isn't a big deal. In the end, we decided to paint the whole thing so for us it wasn't a problem.I'm not sure how long this will hold up. It seems quite sturdy. I'm not a small person and have sat on it without trouble. My daughter is tiny and her roommate isn't large so I doubt they'll put a lot of wear and tear on it. My other daughter and I visited over the weekend and the girls were quite comfy sitting on it and watching a movie. My other daughter slept on it and said the mattress wasn't comfy but that was because of the mattress, not the daybed. We bought a 4 inch, camping type mattress from Mattress firm as my daughter didn't want a thick mattress. So if you're planning to use this regularly as a bed then I'd get a regular mattress, not the 4" one. The 4" is fine though, for using this as a couch, which is what it'll be used for in my daughter's apartment. If she ever decided to use it as a bed on a regular basis I think we'll get a regular mattress.I've included a photo and you can see that we painted this black and dressed it up a little. It looks nice against the white walls.