Excellent wood. Excellent Hardware. Beautiful design. Assembly instructions....really bad. I would give it five stars if it weren/t for the poor assembly instruction; either the ones in the box or on the web. None of them reflect where the pivot rod hardware is placed on the lower section. There is no step by step instruction and this one is challenging because of those rods so you need to figure out a good order of assembly. In general, I found that you build one side on the top section or bottom section, then mate the sections together, then attach the components on the other side that things work out. Even so, I would still recommend this bench! It's a great value that is half the cost of other Grade A teak benches out there.