Galaxy Horizon Plywood Panel Cabinets

Three things stand in the way, and none of them can be fixed with more care.

1. The wood is unknown. Fabuwood does not publish the species of the frame, the door veneer or the sheet goods behind this finish. A stain is partly the colour of the stain and partly the colour and absorbency of the wood it goes into, so matching it on an unknown wood is guesswork with a sample card.
2. The finish is a process, not a can. Fabuwood describes its stained finishes as the product of complex, multi-step finishing, and it does not sell its stains as paint or spray. A local finisher can build a colour in layers; they cannot reproduce a factory sequence they have never seen.
3. The target moves. This stain reads warm or cool depending on light and surroundings, and even Fabuwood’s own descriptions of it range from soft pink undertones to soft taupe to misty greys with silvery undertones. A match made under shop lights against a door sample can look right in the shop and wrong by the kitchen window.

For anything that will be seen next to the cabinets, the factory sheet is the only route with a real chance of reading as part of the kitchen. For something inside a cupboard, or in another room, a local sheet may be perfectly fine; the wood species guide explains how different woods take stain if you do go that way.

Where is a local sheet genuinely fine? Anywhere the stain is never compared with the cabinets. The back of a pantry shelf. A garage storage run in its own room. A drawer divider. A shelf inside a closed cupboard, where it only has to match the natural interior of the box, not the grey-taupe outside. Spending factory-sheet money on those is spending it for nothing, and we will say so if you ask.

Where it goes wrong is the in-between cases: an open shelf unit at the end of a run, a window seat that shares a wall with the uppers, a bar front across the room from the island. Each is visible alongside the cabinets from somewhere people stand, and each is where a near-miss match reads as a different colour, especially in the side light a window or doorway throws.

Read that table for what is missing. Four of the six sheets give no size. None of the four PLY sheets says how many faces carry the finish. And the two IN PLY sheets are titled as interior panels finished on two sides without saying what the finish is. A 48 × 120 sheet is 40 square feet, so the two sized sheets work out at about $20.15 and $22.75 a square foot; the others cannot be costed that way until their size is confirmed.

We would rather tell you what we do not know than fill it in. Before any sheet goes on an order, ask us for its size, which faces are finished, and in what. We confirm those with Fabuwood and put the answer in writing.

Allure cabinet boxes are built from half-inch veneered plywood with a natural finished interior. Open any Galaxy cabinet in this finish and the inside is a natural wood veneer, not grey-taupe. That is worth knowing when reading the title “Interior Plywood Panel (2-Side Finished)”.

It may mean a sheet finished in the stain on both faces, for a divider or a shelf seen from both sides. It may equally mean a sheet finished like the inside of the cabinets on both faces, for building shelves or partitions that live behind a door. The title does not settle it, and the price — lower than the PLY sheets of the same thickness — does not settle it either. The two uses want opposite answers, so this is the first question to ask.

If you are adding shelves or a divider inside a cabinet, a natural interior finish is exactly right, because it will match the box it sits in. If you are building something seen in the room, you need the stained face, and should confirm that the sheet you order has it.

A sheet cut on site shows its plies along every cut. Where an edge will be seen, it needs banding. There is an edge banding part on the Horizon loose-parts list at $7.15; the listing does not say whether that price is per foot or per roll, or whether the banding is stained to match, so ask before relying on it for a visible edge. The touch-up kit ($62.40, same page) is the tool for a nicked corner afterwards.

Grain direction is not published for these sheets. On a 48 × 120 sheet it most likely runs the long way, but that is an assumption, not a spec, and on a stain it decides how a tall panel or a long shelf reads beside the doors. Confirm it before drawing a cut plan.

For thickness, build to the parts you are matching. Allure boxes are half-inch veneered plywood and their shelves are three-quarter-inch veneered plywood, so a shelf cut from a ¾-inch sheet sits naturally beside factory shelves, and a ½-inch sheet suits a box side. The cabinet construction guide covers why those thicknesses are used.

1. What size is this sheet? Four of the six do not say.
2. Which faces are finished, and is the finish the grey-taupe stain or the natural interior?
3. Which way does the grain run?
4. Will a standard cabinet do the job instead? A 30-inch base, GH B30, is $555.75 delivered pre-assembled with its door, drawer and hardware. A built piece costs its sheet plus a day of skilled work.

Ask all four at once with a sketch of what you are building and we will answer them together. Contractors and builders ordering sheets regularly can do it through Captivating Pro, one program with trade pricing and no logins.

Sheets are finished in the same kind of run as the cabinets, so order them on the same release. A sheet ordered after the kitchen is installed is a later part, and Fabuwood notes that later parts may not match installed cabinets exactly. Everything ships in about two weeks.

The sheets are here, the refacing sheets for cladding existing boxes are on the refacing panel page, and the cabinets are on the collection page. For a built piece that has to sit beside the cabinets, a free 3D design will show it before anything is cut, or call (609) 900-3358.