Painted kitchen cabinet and philipping mahogany plywood

[Denise Ohio]

I'm just flailing wildly here, so have pity.

In the next few months I'll be building our kitchen cabinets. We're going to paint them. I thought I'd start by thinking about the end result we want: tough, glossy, easy to clean finish.

I found a craigslisting for Philippine mahogany plywood, but wonder if it would be too difficult to get the desired finish. I've never worked with it before, hence why I say I am just flailing wildly.

Your opinions are appreciated. I haven't bought the material yet, so if you have other suggestions, great.

As always, TIA.

[Jamie Buxton]

Lauan has largish pores. You might not like the way it looks with a gloss varnish on it. Using a grain filler would fill the pores, but be lots and lots of work.

Another issue with lauan is that it is somewhat soft. A thumbnail will dent it. In the field, that's probably not an issue, but if you use solid lumber at corners and such, they'll ding more easily than something like maple.

I'd go with paint-grade maple for your project. Considering how many construction hours you're going to put in it, squeezing pennies out of the material cost doesn't make sense to me. Paint-grade 3/4" maple plywood runs about $45 per sheet in my dealers.

[Von Bickley]

For painted cabinets, I would use birch plywood with maple or poplar face frames...... :)

[Denise Ohio]

The Creek never fails me.

Now I better start saving my pennies for birch or maple ply.

[Steve Schoene]

Birch and maple ply or poplar (the other paint grade wood) are still relatively moderately priced. I do recommend that you also acquire the plywood from a real lumberyard, or better yet from a distributor who specializes in plywood. Will you pay a few dollars more than the plywood from the big box stores like Home Depot or Lowes? Yes, but you are much, much less likely to have plywood that has problems such as large voids (some are inevitable), or delamination, or....

[Joe Chritz]

Definitely look around for quality plywood.

Surprisingly enough the local green Borg has HPVA (Hardwood plywood and veneer association) listed plywood in B2 grade faces for a reasonable ($55 +/-) cost for maple.

I like to do this, call the yard and ask for A1 birch ply. If they know what you are talking about it would likely be a good place to purchase. If there is stunned silence then maybe looking around would be good.

Do some searching on here about paint. There is a lot to picking the right paint as well.

Joe