Alright, here's my attempt at building a speaker the wife will enjoy with a very cheap and easy finish.
I used this spray:
http://www.cornerhardware.com/item_266164/Rust-Oleum/Rust-Oleum/American-Accents-Bleached-Stone-Textured-Spray-Fin/item.html after sanding and priming multiple times. Then put a clear protective coat on top of the stone spray. They turned out pretty good by my non-artsy standards. The roundover router bit on the front baffle helped improve the "not an MDF box" look quite a bit. Neither the countersink diameter nor the countersink depth for the Extremis cutout was quite right. Would I do this again I would "get it right" on a test baffle first, before charging forward. The tweeter fit snug and is flush.
I used dual terminals on the back and plan to mount a crossover box to the stands that have yet to be built.
The Exodus kit comes well packaged and everything is in top-notch form.
The sound --- wow! I am absolutely shocked by how complete and full the sound is coming from a rather simple 2-way bookshelf. This Kit is a fantastic value, easy to build, and sounds great. My favorite types of music are jazz and classical. The kit REALLY excels at these types of music. Other bookshelves that -require- a subwoofer to augment the bass always seem to get bloaty because of the requisite high crossover frequency. "Oh, listen, there's the sub kicking in." With the Extremis the bass is just there. Nice and accurate and dead-on in the image. I also tested them out with some r&b/rap and rock. They played really well with the rock. The kick drums kicked, the bass guitar was defined. Very good. The r&b/rap was also good... but the clean bass might actually take some getting used to for this sort of music. Some bass heavy dance-type r&b and I think almost all rap tracks are meant to have boomy, dirty and too-hot bass, I think. The bass this kit puts out is neither boomy nor dirty and is excellently balanced. Rap/boom fans might want to consider a sub to augment the Kit61. For stereo listening of other kinds of music I can't say enough about these speakers... Bravo! (Now I'm itching to move these to the rears and try a pair of LCR's).
If I was to make one modification, I would probably sandwich some MDF behind the tweeter or seal the tweeter off from the Extremis chamber. I don't think it affects the sound any, but touching the Usher tweeter's front plate reveals a hint of vibration when the Extremis is moving. Also, friendly tip - be sure to test tweeter fit WITH the speaker clips and speaker wire attached. I made the unfortunate mistake of testing tweeter fit only with the driver itself. When I finally got the speaker all finished and ready to mount the tweeter, jumping out of my pants w/ excitement, I learned that the little notches were too small. So, then I had to route the notches a little larger. In the process I hit some of my finish and had to touch some of that up with a few short sprays of left over paint. Anyway, test the notches.
Here are some pics:
