If you do (and you're a braver woman than I am), it should only be at the back, not the sides, if you have adjustable shelves with little holes all along the front of the side panels. And I'm not sure I'd like the look of beadboard at the back but not the side? FWIW, I paid $ to put beadboard at the back of one island open cabinet (it's my cookbook bookcase), but it's not very visible, and similarly if you have a lot of stuff in your cabinets the beadboard might not show up too well.

We did it for our plate rack and in the bathroom cabinets .Unless everyone of your cuts is supper good you will also have to trim it out. My mom recently bought wainscoat textured wall-paper at lowes and used that instead. you put it up, paint it a color close to your wood color then rub on watered down Folk Art Paint then lightly wipe it off and it stains in the pho woodgrain and grooves and looks really nice. My 9 year old daughter helped us do it and she did as well as any of us. So its easy to do. It would be much less messy though if the painting was done before the paper was put up.

We have painted beadboard at the back only of the hutch in our kitchen. I never thought about back vs. back and sides. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure all of the hutches I looked at when planning the kitchen only had beadboard at the back.

Our Lowes (or HD, I can never keep them straight) carries a 1/4" thick MDF panel product that comes in individual tongue and groove pieces 7"w X 42"h. I want to say $22 for 5 (or was it 3?) pieces. You would have to be pretty obsessive about cutting them as carefully as possible to fit across the back of your cabinet as neatly as possible. However, if you're painting the interiors, painters caulk will cover any little errors at the vertical edges and wooden screen door molding with one of the rounded edges cut off could make a very attractive top and bottom trim. A tiny cove molding at the top would be nice too. Look through all the little moldings at a lumber yard or big box if you want or need something to cover the top and bottom cut edges. The bottom edge of our beadboard, where it meets the counter, is trimmed out and that wasn't to hide bad cuts. It's an historically appropriate design detail.

I think trimming out the interiors yourself is a great idea!

So funny - I wanted to do the exact same thing. I wanted to replace my doors and have glass doors made and also have bead board put on the back of my upper cabinets. Here's the problem I had: I wanted to use real 3/4 wood beadboard, not MDF. The 3/4 loss inside the cabinet caused my ll" dinner plates not fit anymore. Big issue! So instead we had the uppers totally remade and really they they turned out beautiful. It was more than buying new doors and adding beadboard, but we are so glad we did. Painters still here, but will post pictures very soon.

hi,
when I was at the Design Center recently I saw this and really liked it. Here are a couple of pics with doors closed and then the inside. Can't offer anything more than inspiration as I am not much of a DIY'er. HTH

ella, you have the same dilema as I. At first I thought this wouldn't look good so I posted a question on the HD forum about the dark interiors and 99% said to leave them as is, but if I wanted to make them white, to use foam core board with wall paper to dress it up. Some recommended just painted foam core board. That way I could easily change it out if I wanted to. I thought that was a pretty neat idea. What I am going to do initially is leave the brown wood and see how I like it and if I find I don't like it I'll change it out then. We have so much to do I'll just be glad to have the house finished.

Are you going to have lights in them? That will make a difference also as far as how much you'll be able to see inside if you keep them dark.

Let us know what you decide.

So funny - I wanted to do the exact same thing. I wanted to replace my doors and have glass doors made and also have bead board put on the back of my upper cabinets. Here's the problem I had: I wanted to use real 3/4 wood beadboard, not MDF. The 3/4 loss inside the cabinet caused my ll" dinner plates not fit anymore. Big issue! So instead we had the uppers totally remade and really they they turned out beautiful. It was more than buying new doors and adding beadboard, but we are so glad we did. Painters still here, but will post pictures very soon.