I'm making a special desk for a friend of mine who is a quadrapalegic
(sp). It will be a fairly large "L" shaped desk so that he has room to
move his wheelchair to use one section and his wife can use the other leg
of the "L" as a normal desk.

My original plan was to make this out of red oak since red oak plywood is
readily available and it isn't terribly expensive. My problem is that
his wife wants it to be black to match the piano. Now I'm not NEARLY
good enough to produce a finish to match a baby grand, and I'm thinking
that any shiny black surface would look awful on ANY minor surface
blemish. I'm also not looking at some exotic wood since frankly I don't
want to spend thousands of dollars on this project

I wouldn't think anything short of paint would produce a suitable black
so I was thinking about putting black laminate on the top/sides and
trimming in something like beech or maple. That would seem to make it
easier hiding the laminate edges.

Anybody have any words of wisdom?

Thanks,
Jim