If I do convince my hubby that this is something that would work in our guest room it will most definitely be stained. We're both wood lovers. I being down right obsessive about it, so much so that I have folders of different wood species on my computer. The thought of covering any woodgrain (other than some knotty pines or low grain woods) up with paint brings me close to hyper ventilating and my eyes start to twitch. I'm a bit embrassed to write that, but it's true. If you could have only seen me recently when at a local thrift store I spotted a vintage Lane Acclaim cocktail table and student desk made from beautifully grained walnut (my favorite non exotic wood species) and ash, you'd know just what I'm talking about. (I'll started another thread when I get a chance to take some pictures for all of you that understand that feeling.) That being said, I don't mind anyone posting about the painted plywood floors on this thread, since others may very well be interested. Just didn't want anyone to feel hurt that I didn't rave about the ones they posted. You could very well feel the same way about stained wood that I do painted wood...though I can't imagine why. Just kidding. Kashmi, I love it when you can recycle materials from a reno into something else. I want to find a way to use the old stairs (2x10's) into something instead of just tossing them. Most likely rustic benches or tables for one of our porches. Pesky, I completely understand about life getting in the way. We've been in our "new" home for just just short of eight and a half years now and just two weeks ago finally got the construction grade stairway replace with beautiful solid oak floors. Still have finished touches left to do, but the stairs are in! YAY! We too have oak hardwood floors through much of the main level and hallway of our home. Which is why I'm not sure hubby will go for this. At least he didn't pooh pooh it when I mentioned it to him the other day. Jeane Gallo I'm not sure how those would work if there were doors in the room since they're so thick. You might have to cut off the bottom edge of the door so they'd open. Cindyloo123, if we do decide to go this way I'll be sure to share pictures. It will be awhile before we have time with the wedding and other summer activities though. You'll have to be patient. forboystoo, That's where I got the second picture from in my original post. I get that error message every single time I post to a thread I started. bluemoon, I think you'd need a moisture barrier of some sort. lauriedeee, here's a picture of screen molding...

I'm not going to lift any 4x8 sheet of plywood anywhere. I'm going to pay the guy at the desk for my plywood, hand him my cut sheet, and then I'm going to go in the back and stand around while the guys who work the lumberyard's panel saw wrestle it around and cut it into 6.5" and 10" boards. I'm pretty sure I mentioned the lumberyard's panel saw. (I love their panel saw--it's got this huge room all to itself, with big long guides, etc. It does a beautiful job ripping plywood into boards--they've done it for me before, and the edges were beautiful. In my next life I want to live in Alabama and have a separate two-car garage, like my brother, so I can install a humongous panel saw, just because I can.) I personally only have to wrestle the 8'-long boards onto my FIL's table saw, or I will use the Kreg cutting jig w/ my jigsaw. I can lift just fine--I can't necessarily grip something sort of heavy that is biting into wood, and steer it. Maybe I'd be OK w/ a lightweight or small table saw. I like your suggestions about crosscutting, though. The first sheet lends itself to that very easily. I'll have to look at sheet #2 and see if I can minimize the number of cuts. It means paying the lumberyard for more cuts (since I can do the crosscuts on the boards easily enough), especially since by crosscutting the sheet, then I pay for twice as many rips. I also run the risk of them reading the cut sheet wrong and leaving me w/ pieces that don't work--that's been my experience w/ all sorts of things. I feel confident w/ my knowledge of what each board should turn into, so I don't really want to delegate that to someone else. I had planned to cut all the 50.5" pieces at once, so that if the guide is the tiniest bit off, at least they'll all be exactly the same size and so that I don't have to keep resetting the guides. Just because unit is boards doesn't mean I'm going to cut one board into all of its sizes all at once. I can set the excess aside while I continue the 50.5" cuts, and then do all the 18"-ers or 16.5"-ers at once. I figure the only real problem is keeping track of what piece is supposed to come out of what board--and that's what blue painter's tape and a marker (or a carpenter's pencil) is for, right? Isn't there a way to prevent veneer rip-out when crosscutting plywood? Doesn't everybody have to crosscut plywood at some point? For this project, I don't care--it's a closet shelf. But I'm curious. This post was edited by talley_sue_nyc on Mon, Jul 29, 13 at 12:06

Note that wood filler will crack over time as the wood moves if you are intending to use it to fill cracks between wood pieces. You'll need to use caulk to avoid that and caulk can not be shaped and molded like the woodfiller. I had the plywood style cabinets you have, but in much much better shape and was just going to do a replace the doors and hardware and re-configure a bit because I saw in person how the added wood to the doors looked after a few years in my friends home (looked nice when just done and they did spend a lot of detail work on it). However since my boxes were built in large pieces I couldn't reconfigure and ended up completely replacing the boxes too.. This was my old house. In my current house we have plywood built cabinets that all looks nice on the surface, but are cheaply built IMHO. We've fixed slides twice, the doors are a bit warped, drawer boxes need some help soon. I also installed some IKEA cabinets in our dining room which holds all my daughters toys. They get as much use as our kitchen cabinets and have held up so much better as well, plus they have been handled by little people who are not careful. They are low VOC and has the nice bells and whistles of full extension soft close drawer glides and soft close doors. I really want to switch my kitchen cabinets to IKEA, but for me to do that I need to come up with a better layout to satisfy the other issues with my kitchen. Unfortunately for you it doesn't look like cabinet grade plywood was used on your cabinets due to the roughness which is another huge difference between yours and irmaly's starting point. If you insist on keeping the boxes vs. getting the nice bells and whistles you could with IKEA cabinets, then at least save yourself the frustration and get some new doors/drawer fronts and also some new drawer boxes. In my old house I used Scherr's to replace the doors in my 2 bathrooms and for a master vanity I built and used all wood in poplar - a cheaper paintgrade wood if you want to avoid the MDF. However having MDF as the center panel in a door makes the door more stable and less prone to wood changes with humidity. I agree with most though that starting from scratch would be worth it vs. the amount of time you'll spend on what you have and then how long it will last after that. You'd also have a better starting point with new cabinets and re-configuring the space. Sure you can do what you want and end up with it looking a whole lot better- but you said you were short on time and working with what you have is going to take a long time to make it look pristine. That is a lot of filling and sanding needed. Never mind how you plan to fix the edges so it looks good. That line would bother me to see the line between the applied wood and then the ratty edge underneath that will need a lot of work to made look good again. Sure you wouldn't see it when closed and looking straight at them, but when open or from the top or side it will be hard not to notice. Also are your existing doors the right overlap to be able to change to concealed hinges?

And here's a long shot of the total effect. They look a lot like built-ins. Because they AREN'T built-ins, we left a bigger space above the counter (partly because the TV needed it, but even if it hadn't, I'd have left a space so it looked like there was a "reason" we switched from one to the other. NOW...our fireplace is a bigger focal point than your TV, and our wall juts out there. So we left that big display space. Plus, we have no windows. In YOUR case, w/ those windows taking up so much of the wall, and your TV so low (and it being a TV, which to me is more functional and less decorative), I might consider whether I wanted a built-in look in the middle as well--sort of a "full wall" effect, wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, with an empty space where the TV goes. If I wanted to do that, I'd want a backing on my upper shelves so it looked more like the whole thing was one unit. And with a "full wall" effect, I might even consider whether I wanted it all to be painted the same color as the other walls (or maybe white like the woodwork), so it was less like "kitchen cabinetry" or "furniture" and more like "part of the room / woodwork." That would keep the full wall of storage from overpowering the room, perhaps.