Open any cabinet door in a ten-year-old builder kitchen and you will usually find raw particleboard with a stapled back. It was never sealed, so it drinks in whatever reaches it, and the panel under the sink is nearly always the first to go.
We build interiors in prefinished birch plywood. Prefinished means the UV coating is cured onto both faces at the mill, before the sheet ever reaches our shop, so an interior arrives sealed rather than raw. It wipes clean, it handles the humidity around a sink bank, and it does not yellow the way a site-finished panel does.
Thickness is decided cabinet by cabinet rather than as one rule for the whole kitchen. 18mm (3/4") goes where a shelf has to span, where a drawer bank is carrying weight, or where hardware needs more to bite into. 16mm (5/8") goes where saving the weight is worth having, such as tall doors and upper boxes.
If you would rather not have wood inside, the same cabinets can be built in 16mm melamine — white, an oak-look texture, or any solid matte colour. It is a choice, not a downgrade.
Tagged
- cabinetmaking
- millwork
- birchplywood
- craftsmanship
