Toekicks

[Matt Meiser]

I'm getting near the end of the woodworking on my parents' kitchen project. One of the items on my list is toekicks. I was planning to use solid cherry material for them but I'm starting to run low on material and may need to buy a little more. Any reason to consider something else (i.e. cherry plywood) for them? Seems like the plywood would be easier to get straight clear lengths from, but I'm wondering about durability too.

[Lee Schierer]

Matt I would think plywood would be fine or else glue up a sandwich of cherry as the meat and poplar as the bread and resaw the cherry to get a thicker laminate.

I've even seen some toekicks that were painted black for a contrast to the flooring on some cabinets.

[frank shic]

i only use plywood for toe kicks.

[Tim Reagan]

I plan to use 1/4 finished cherry ply for my toe kicks. I will place them on after the tile, as I'm not a big fan of the look of quarter round. It could also be replaced in few years if beat up.

[Bill Arnold]

On all of the pieces I've built for our Master Suite, I used cherry with black walnut trim. For the toekicks, I used 3/4" plywood with black walnut veneer for contrast. The darker toe kicks give a lighter appearance to the pieces; i.e., as if they're floating -- sorta.

[Karl Brogger]

Plywood is fine. Solid cherry is a bit spendy for something that is hardly seen anyway.

[Paul Girouard]

For standard recessed toe space covers I all most always use 1/4 ply, glued and pin nailed to the "sub toe spaces" that are screwed onto the box from beneath.

A couple of other shops that have installed cabinets on my jobs built a continuous toe space that set first the boxes are placed on top of the pre set T/S and screwed down thru the cab. box floor. They also used 1/4" T/S covers glued and pin nailed on.

Once in a blue moon a cabinet gets built with a flush looking T/S , made to look more like the base of a piece of furniture those I make out of matching lumber.

Like this VG Fir TV cabinet,

No toe space cover :

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b299/PEG688/sept17016-1.jpg

T/S cover installed:

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b299/PEG688/July3rd3.jpg