Just finished putting this together with my father and friend. Took us 2.5 days. Spent hours organizing the parts in order of steps before starting construction - highly recommend doing that as the parts are all mixed up in boxes!! So far kids love it and it seems very solid and sturdy.

This is a very long review but we buy items based off of reviews so we wanted to be as thorough as possible. Hope it helps! Assembly: Instructions for assembly were not clear with how they were labeled. The pictures were not clear where the wood is supposed to be (in the front, back, etc.). Some of the boards we received were mislabeled and we did not figured it out until we put the swing set together. Overall assembly was frustrating. Took 3 experienced adults in total 3.5 full days. We read someone else's review which stated to sort out all the pieces ahead of time. So helpful but took about 6 hours to do! Quality: For the price point the quality is not what we expected. The wood is very very dry lightweight cedar and prone to splitting. Not all the holes were pre-drilled and we had to pre-drill or re-drill ourselves. The first time it rained some of the manufacturer stain started to peel off (about 6 boards). Due to the quality of the wood the structure of the wood is creaky. The money bars good for children weight (if they can reach them). The slide is beyond disappointing. There are 4 plastic tubes that structure the slide. I would not be comfortable going down the slide with my son, which I was looking forward to. The slide is not molded plastic. The instructions do not give weight restrictions for each unit. My husband (190 lbs.) tested each swing, the ladder, the fort, but was not comfortable trying the slide, monkey bars, or the observation desk. I tested the observation deck (130 lbs) and was not comfortable. The wood felt wobbly and unsafe. There is floor of the observation hovers above the swing set beam. Makes it rickety. My husband is going to have to reinforce the floor. For the price, we shouldn't have to. Overall Maintenance: We are going to have to stain twice a year, especially since it has been up for a week and the stain is already flaking. Some pieces probably even need to be sanded. Overall, it is a very nice looking swing set. We expected higher quality wood for the price we paid. We are comfortable with our son and his friends playing with it. For the size it was a good price. That may be where the quality declined. Our son loves it.

It's fun for the grandkids, however when putting it together some of the bolt holes didn't line up and required re-drilling. Outside of that it was easy enough to put together, their technical writer could have done a better job in writing the instruction manual. As I found it faster to jump ahead and build somethings first while assembling to Skyfort...

Not terribly difficult to put together. However, the slide molding was a little off and it starting to come apart after only a few weeks. Also, this isn’t cedar. It almost feels like particle board. The people who work for backyard discovery are wonderful and friendly.

The Skyfort II is nice, when put together it is smaller than I thought it would be. My grandson loves it, however his pepaw did not like how each section was in different boxes all separate. It took him and my son 8 days to put it together. It is best to lay out each box separately to let the pieces be easier to find.

Pretty good. Ordered this for our three daughters ages 5, 5 and 11. Everything seems solid enough...couple of cracked boards on arrival, and one "peeling" board face on the picnic table top. The picnic area is pretty narrow even my 11 year old has a bit of a time getting in and out, and all three eating at it, could have added another slat for the seat and table area to make it more usable for four kids. And then the slide, our 80lb daughter slides on it (its FAST) but it bows quite a bit and makes a lot of noise as she goes down. Documents say it supports 120 lbs x 9 kids, so I hope this holds up, would have liked a slide in one piece though (or been given the option to trade it out.) Suggestions for future owners, put those numbered bags of screws and nuts in numerical order, it will be fast to grab the ones you need at each step, if you know where they are. Also we sealed ours before putting together and that was a huge time sink, but again, worth it in rainy Virginia. We have had it together about three weeks, two of the screws on top of the rock wall sheered off after just a few climbs up, allowing the top to lift off. - Not sure what happened there, but we added some stronger screws. All the kids are happy with it. Together, we decided that if we were designing a better model we would have a one piece slide, made more monkey bars for the bigger kids, made the "floor space about two feed wider (underneath and on top), added a slat to each picnic table seat and one to two more for the table, and made the swing area about 1 foot taller.

Project is daunting at first. A lot of boxes and a lot of parts. A good general knowledge of tools is extremely helpful. It took about a week to ten days to build but not eight hour days. Our delay was getting final area around play yard prepared. Several guys needed to move it to spot. Some of the instructions are difficult to understand from drawings. Some of the boards were warped and I had to trim a board in different sections to make it fit. I found it impossible to hide all the markings(letter/numbers) from view. I think my grandkids will have years of fun on the Skyfort 2.

We haven't finished the assembly yet. Two of us have worked for over 20 hours so far. We beleive we can finish it in another five hours. The assembly details in the illustrations are not always easy to understand resulting in boards being put in the wrong position. There are some parts missing and damaged. Overall we pleased with the play set.

I bought this item and chose to put it together myself and that was a mistake. So far i have moderate problems with the quality of the equipment(subject to change as i am only 1/3 of the way through the process). The directions on the other hand are very vague and extremely difficult to follow making me tear down things that i already had put together. This has been slowing my process greatly and very frustrating to say the least. I would NOT recommend anyone purchasing this product unless of course they have it installed by the company. Very disappointed, Bill Harriott

We had this play set installed a few weeks ago and it completely transformed our backyard. The kids absolutely love playing on the playset and play dates have become so much more entertaining. Everyone wants to come over to our house to enjoy our backyard. We couldn't be happier!