Veneered Plywood Sides

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Here is an island that is made of pressed wood.  When water was spilled on the floor, the wood absorbed it like a sponge and then started to crumble.

Most cabinet makers switched to using pressed wood for sides and even some doors.  The reason is nothing more than lowering cost at the expense of the cabinets quality.  Some pressed sides use a thin veneer of wood, but most use a photograph of a wood grain stuck to the pressed wood like a sticker.  These cabinets are not made to last.  If you get 10 years out of them, you should consider yourself lucky.

The use of real woods instead of particle board or pressed engineered woods greatly increases the strength and longevity of a cabinet, as well as increasing the value and beauty of the piece.  One of the biggest problems with pressed woods is that it crumbles once it gets wet.  Cabinets that get wet from leaks, spills or even humidity, can literally start sinking as the bottoms crumble.  The press wood acts like a sponge and soaks up the water while expanding, making the product soft and unstable. 

Another problem with using pressed woods, especially when not using a solid wood face frame, is the mounting of hardware such as door hinges and drawer tracks.  Pressed wood is terrible at holding screws.  There are many ways hardware manufacturers have tried to alleviate this problem, by using specially designed screws or plug, but in the end, none of them really hold up.  

The only real solution is to use real wood.  At Unique Woodworking, we only use real veneer ply and solid woods.  In fact, we use 3/4 inch veneer ply for the sides on all cabinets.  While most shops using veneered ply usually use 1/2 inch for interior sides, and 1/2 inch will hold up fairly well, we still prefer to use 3/4 inch for extra stability.  We feel not only will it make the sides more stable, but it gives deeper dados which add strength to the shelves.

While many of our competitors want to sell you cabinets every 10 years, our goal is not to only have the cabinets last a lifetime, but to last several lifetimes.