I made some new shelves for my kitchen storage area. As you will no doubt observe, these hold the essentials: Booze, Internet, Microwave. The can also (in theory) could be easily duplicated to extend the shelf along an otherwise very long wall. Might need to reinforce the liquor shelf though... "Song is Rhythm Changes" by John Deley and the 41 Players.

The wood for this project was a standard cabinetry grade plywood from Home Depot. I sized the shelf to use as much out of each sheet as possible, and ended up with a design that was roughly 1 shelf per sheet of plywood. The thing to watch out for is the saw kerf. While the cutsheet says 16", the kerf takes about an 1/8" off. In order to get 16 even strips, I set the cut to 15-7/8" and made sure to run the last strip through once to trim up to the exact same size as the other runs.

I was excited to finally have an excuse to use a pocket hole jig. It's not a Kreg Jig, which all the other DIY bloggers seem to have, but the one I got was $10 cheaper at HD and *basically* works the same.

I took the recommendation of another coworker to use a particular white, water-based stain to cover with polyurethane. Although the look came out quite nice, it was very challenging to get the application to go on evenly. The wood kept sucking up the moisture in the stain. I had to work very fast. For future projects I'm already wondering where I could find some pre-finished ply.