Replacement Window Sills - Unusually Deep

[91FE]

A friend has asked me to make a few replacement interior window sills for his house. He chose me, instead of HD or Lowe's, because the existing sills are 14+ inches deep and there's nothing close to that for sale off of the shelf. The previous home owner used regular 3/4" plywood and didn't treat the edge.

So my question is: what should they be replaced with? If it helps you decide, I've got a typical arsenal of tools, but nothing too fancy (no planer or jointer). I'm thinking poplar joined with biscuits and sanded down with my palm sander. Would edge-banded ply, or MDF, be better? Or, something else I haven't considered yet?

Thanks

[Garasaki]

Sounds like you are painting these?

At that depth, I'd probably lean to plywood with a decorative edging. Since you don't own a jointer, doing panel glue ups will be a task more prone to failure then I'd want to undertake. I would not use MDF as it is very easily dented.

Personally I'd choose to keep them as clear finished wood rather then painting, but hey it ain't my house. Some high quality baltic birch, especially if you can find a sheet with just a little figure to it, and maybe some walnut edging (contrast) or maple (blends good w/bb) edging.

Or even better, cherry ply with QS sycamore edging - that would be sweet. Good idea me, I think I'll store that one in the old brain bucket for future reference - cherry window sills with sycamore edging....yummy, the cherry would absolutely shimmer with the sun shining off it....

[LinuxRandal]

Can you tell what materials the rest of the trim is?

If regular trim, you might consider those pine handy panels (no jointer required), or if oak or something I would then consider a non borg plywood, with a decorative trim.

Is this house straw bales, or stone or what? If stone, you might have to either do something to level the board, or take a chisel in case any of the stones have a high spot.

[91FE]

Thanks guys. I think the house is stone and stucco. The rest of the trim is just regular painted finger-jointed pine. The existing sills are painted ply with no edge treatment, so the plies are showing through... looks bad. He's going to stick with painted trim. I didn't realize I could get pine panels that wide. Looks like I'm off to the borg to see what they've got.

[iceman61]

Lowes has solid 1" panels that are factory joined in various widths up to 24-36" (trying to remember off the top of my head). Around here they are on the same isle as the shelving material & short project stock. (pine, oak, poplar) I'm not sure if HD has this but I know Lowes does. I'm thinking that these are up to 6' long. It might be worth your time to check these out. Great quality plus they are solid pine planks, just already joined. You might want to grab a pack or 2 of shims while you're there. Same isle.

[91FE]

We ended up using the pine panels from Lowe's. He's going room-by-room... so we've only done one so far. Turned out really nice.