We purchased 2 Aleko manual retractable awnings. Yes we knew we had to put them together and install them. The instruction manual was absolutely horrendous. They were next to impossible for anyone other than someone who is a builder or something close to put them together. My husband has his own building company. It took him 16 hours to put together and install. It was next to impossible to find an online video to watch for installation and even the one he could find was not very good! And now that it is installed it seems that he needs to somehow put a middle bracket in (not in the parts) because it sags. If the town dump was open, my husband would have brought all of the pieces there. It was an extremely frustrating experience and I would never purchase or recommend something like this to anyone.