I dont like melamine either, its super heavy and the only good thing about it is the plastic coating over it.

If I were to build anything (Like I have sitting unfinished in the garage) it would be one side sanded plywood. I'm still struggling to find time to finish the coats of poly, I'm just procrastinating after this hot summer to get back out there

In all, it ended up being just a bit cheaper for us to build instead of just buying an AP 6' cage, but we like to look of wood and wanted it to fit our dimensions. So we went ahead and threw it together.