Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This dining nook looks wonderful. It's made with real pine and although it's cheap pine, it has a great feel and finish. Its durability is comparable to any piece of furniture you can buy at places like Kmart or Target - good enough for adults who are not excessively heavy, and who are careful with their furniture. This is not the quality you would get from a custom wood shop, but it is also easily a grand less than what you would pay for that, and this set looks and feels nicer than any other store bought furniture I've sat on before, a lot of which is crap. I was in the market for a dining booth and was looking at custom ordering from stores that supply for restaurants but prices were over a thousand dollars, and if you shop around and wait for sales, you can find excellent deals on this set. What I decided to do is get two of these on sale and put them together - you can reverse the directions and assemble them as mirroring nooks. I put the two tables together (both of which are surprisingly sturdy and don't rock or wobble at all) with the intent of putting a table runner between them, and topped it off with some candles. It even looks okay without the table runner hiding the seam so far. I also ordered the seat cushions for it and bravo, we have a winner. I now have a wrap around bench and dining nook in my dining area that can accommodate plenty of people. I opted to use the two side benches elsewhere because they are the only two really concerning parts of the set, I would not trust two adults on those for long. The main seating is pretty good, although the whole setup is not meant for heavy adults; any overweight adult would make me nervous on this set. If you're within a healthy weight range, I wouldn't be concerned. Anyone handy can also easily beef up the main stress points. There is storage under the main seats, which flip up. This sounds handy until you realize the bottom of the storage is basically cardboard. Cut a piece of real wood to size and screw it into the set instead of the cardboard, and you'll have something useful. Otherwise, don't expect to store more than a tablecloth in there. But it is a cool idea and easily made more useful with a little diy enhancements. Assembly can be a bit of a pain because they didn't always make things line up the best and the directions are pretty weak. While most can certainly figure it out, expect a bit of time to go into the assembly, and plan your attack especially if you're making mirroring sets, it's easy to get confused. The seat depth is short and there is a lip at the top of the seats, the top trim molding kind of pokes your spine. What I decided to do was buy the matching cushion set, and use the cushions from the side benches as backrests. It's still a short depth seat, but much more comfortable now, and it's a meal nook to offset my kitchen island dining bar that I use typically. All in all, I wanted a booth setup that I could eat or work at, and this does the job. Photographic evidence of stuff like this I find to be necessary for users to determine if it's the crappy cheap stuff, or that hidden gem that balances cheap cost with surprising quality. I say this one strikes the desired balance - insanely cheap, and pretty impressive quality, not excellent, but almost certainly better than any other dining nook you can get for two hundred a pop.