A number of weeks ago I asked some advice about the price I was giving to some friends for a built in book case / entertainment center. I finally finished and they are very very pleased. I was going by a picture of what they wanted with only a few changes. They didn't want anything very ornate with tons of moldings. Just something "functional and normal looking" in their words.
The cases are all birch plywood. the frames, doors and drawers are all poplar. It measures 13' by 8' and the shelves are 16" deep. I used rough poplar to make the doors and drawers and some s3s poplar for the face frames. The fluted molding is from lowes and is the only part that I did not fashion myself. It is actually 7 pieces. four on the bottom and three on top. The four bottom and middle top sections had the frames pre attached. The upper rail of the face frame on the bottom units is also covering the bottom shelf of the upper units (If you can follow that). The same is true for the stiles of the upper center section covering the edges of the adjoining sides. That way I was able to eliminated a lot of lines that would have been very noticeable with this white finish.
The finish is a flat ultra white floor paint. Thats the color they wanted so no "when are you gonna cover that primer?" comments. It looks great and if its durable enough for floors it must be durable enough for a book case (I think).
The pictures are nice but don't really do it justice. This simple book case made the living room rather dynamic in place of being very understated and boring.