Jessica,

This old thread has a lot of info and is linked to some older threads. Hopefully this will help. Most on GW believe in plywood construction. Drawers should be high quality (wood and dovetailed usually). What brands are you looking at? Give us some info on those and people who have those brands can tell you how they picked and chose for their kitchens. Hope that helps.

Briana

Here is a link that might be useful: old thread on cabinet construction

It depends on what style cabinets you want. Inset, painted, wood fronts, shaker style, slab fronts? There are different answers depending on the style cabinet. no matter what the construction, the box should be 3/4" material. There are different grades of both furniture board and plywood. MDF is very very heavy, yet often considered great if you are doing shaker style painted cabs since you dont' get as much expansion/contraction which creates the dreaded splitting at the corners.

No matter what stuff... I'd go to a highly recommended custom guy whose work I could see first hand in a home. Full extension drawers for sure. Let us know the style of your home so we know what kind of cabinetry you would like to get. That will drive advice.

Ditto what remodel asks - we'd need to know more about you're style prefs. If you want a an inset door in mahogany - no sense advising you about the merits of MDF.

Also, money is always an object at some point , no matter the size budget- where does yours stand?

Also, Also location and uses also play a part - what I rec as best for a rental at the beach will not be the same as the best for an empty nester's pied a terre in a snowy climate.

THANK YOU to = BRIANA,REMO,ANTSS
Thanks for info on thread!
To answer everyones questions...here are the details.....

New Home breaking ground this coming week. ;)
My husband and I with our 2 children and possibly a 3rd down the road...
a home that we hope to live in till the end of our days....;)
Finished = 4,000 sqft. w/ another 2,500 Unfinished in Basement that we will look into later on.
Need Cabinetry for the following:
KITCHEN, HUTCH, CUBBIES, MASTER BATH, POWDER ROOM, BATHx3 2nd floor.
GOAL = Old French Country - Old,Aged,Antique,Distressed,Worn, Cream, Antique White, Bisquit, (a lot of different color names, but you get the idea...)
kitchen and hutch in breakfast room = BEADED INSET w/ RAISED PANEL, EXPOSED HINGES, FULL EXTENSION, SOFT CLOSE, FURNITURE STYLE, Some Glass Cabinets, Want cabinets to have over sanding on edges, dents, dings, worm holes, those features that give "aging" appearance. Hearing that Soft Maple is wood that paints the best and distresses the best. Have been told that Alder is also another popular wood to achieve that particular "look" I am after b/c it has some of those features already naturally occurring, but is softer than the Maple. Alder is better for staining though and not painting ???? Kitchen also with ALL BUILT IN's for seamless look. farmhouse sink, Mantel Style Hood above Range/Stove, Hardwood Floor in Handscraped Hickory.
GRANITE or QUARTZ ???? Still deciding......
Kitchen itself is about 17x13 with a separate space for kitchen table - "Breakfast Room" which is just off to the left of the kitchen. (open floor plan) No Windows in Kitchen but a ton along the back of the house. The front island will include the kitchen sink & will be facing out into those areas. (if I am standing at sink, the breakfast room to my left, straight ahead is a family room and to my right will be a great room.
I have talked to and met with many cabinet companies....
Amish - all plywood box construction, dovetailed, 3/4, soft close, full extension. still waiting on quote from them
Hartville Cabinet & Design - quote of 48-50k whole house including install, tax, delivery. Love the guy I am working with. Feel confident about the outcome. Referred by many.
4BWood - Awesome facility, was educated greatly on their custom cabinets after a good hour tour of factory. The price point was 20k less than the above, but they did not include install b/c they don't do installs. I prefer the person making the cabinets to also do the install. Our builder would prefer this too, but does have guys to install cabinets if we need for another charge. 4B doesn't do installs cuz they are the manufacturer. Only working directly with me (usually only dealers) but someone dropped the ball (the dealer they referred me to) and so 4B just agreed to work directly with me. They were explaining the MDF stuff to me. That it is more strong and more dense than plywood. They use this for their sides and backs I believe. The fronts are all wood. They use dowels to add strength in construction of box. They talked about plywood sagging in time and bowing when used for shelf ???? quoted me all MDF for laundry room and same set up in kitchen as in all other areas of house as described above.
So, what is wrong with this picture? How could 2 CUSTOM CABINET SHOPS quote so differently. I mean...we are talking a difference of 20k. ???? What am I missing????
I just don't know what to do.....

You're focusing a lot on materials, which is good, but should also focus on other dimensions, such as how they are put together. For example, my DH just told me that there is a special router bit that is 23/32 instead of 24/32 so that the plywood pieces fit really snug! (He's using it so he knows) He also made the cabinets with a full inch instead of 3/4 -- this is an option at some cabinet makers too - I know you can get this at Crown Point and I think Christopher Peacock also uses a full inch. Finally, think about how the cabinets are finished -- one of the most important aspects of a "quality" cabinet.

bill1:
I agree with you as far as level where you pay cheap junk price for a cheap junk product. I do realize that the "finish" is where the dollars are coming in. The "finish" that I am after is from what I understand, more costly than a plain stained cabinet. Example: If you take a Maple Cabinet with the same exact construction and just stain it one particular color vs. all the detail of a distressed Maple with all that I have described above adding in paint and glaze, etc....every cabinet maker has told me that this is where the money comes in because of the amount of time that is factored in to create that look. I understand this.
"$50k cabinets aren't necessarily better than $40k cabinets.", I guess that is just my point, why is one company charging 50k, when another is quoting 30k. Am I missing something here? I know that paying 50k doesnt necessarily mean I am getting a better cabinet construction/finished product than the one that is 30k. right?
Thank you for all responses so far! It is appreciated!

We are finally getting our Crown Point Cabinets installed this week. From the General Contracter to the Floor Guy, they all agreed how nice the cabs are. The GC said they were "the best" he has ever seen in 30 years.

Another great thing about the CP cabs are that they are delivered fully assembled from the hinges to the knobs, so the installation cost will lower and faster. Also since they are 100% wood, the GC can attach the cabs to the walls without fear of the pressboard cracking�

"I guess that is just my point, why is one company charging 50k, when another is quoting 30k. Am I missing something here?"

A particular glazed/distressed pattern is purely a vanity purchase. Business people know that and will charge as much as the market will bare. Their quotes are completely unrelated to the material or labor costs. (Yes, complicated techniques take a little more time, but not $20k of labor!!!) You may as well be asking why designer jeans cost $200 but Target jeans cost only $25. Same materials - same sweatshop labor.

Want cabinets to have over sanding on edges, dents, dings, worm holes, those features that give "aging" appearance.

If you want a distressed aged look, you won't want MDF, as MDF distressed to bare wood will look like . . . MDF. And plywood distressed to bare wood will look like . . . plywood. Whatever you are heavily distressing should be solid wood.

They were explaining the MDF stuff to me. That it is more strong and more dense than plywood. They use this for their sides and backs I believe. The fronts are all wood. They use dowels to add strength in construction of box. They talked about plywood sagging in time and bowing when used for shelf

I would avoid these folks, they are playing you for a sucker. MDF has much less stiffness than plywood. It is smoother and more uniform (nice for painting) and denser (nice for acoustic dampening, i.e. speaker enclosures). See link below. Dowels are not a particularly high-end joinery method.

How could 2 CUSTOM CABINET SHOPS quote so differently. I mean...we are talking a difference of 20k. ???? What am I missing????

Because there are people with $50K that they can rip off.

Here is a link that might be useful: MDF FAQ

I should add that my upper cabinet is currently propped up because the screws are ripping out of the MDF and the cabinet bottom was separating from the rest of the box. MDF does not take normal fasteners as well as plywood or solid wood.

Ok, some thoughts on ideal construction for kitchen cabinets.

Don't think (or get deceived into thinking) that your cabinets will be ''heirloom furniture quality''. Real, heirloom, hand-crafted furniture is a whole 'nother world. Solid and carefully selected wood, high-quality matched veneers, no metal fasteners, hand-cut joinery, no steel hardware save hinges, hand-fitted tolerances, hand-cut dovetails, rubbed finishes, inlays, etc. A piece can cost $10-20K. It will last for hundreds of years if cared for. Kitchen cabinets are utilitarian, bought by the linear foot, with an overlay of bling-for-the-moment, and built to be ripped out in 20-30 years. If someone says you should pay $50K because you'll get ''heirloom furniture quality'' cabinets, you should laugh.

So, cabinet construction - what I'd like: cases of 3/4'' or 1'' baltic birch or appleply or similar plywood, 3/4'' tops, full dado joints, drawers either solid wood or plywood w/ solid wood trim covering the plywood edges, dovetailed front corners and 1/2'' bottoms, solid wood face frames with mortise/tenon joinery, frame-panel construction doors, narrow and uniform gaps (1/16'' or less) around inset doors, brass mortised butt hinges, full-extension undermount metal glides, whatever beading/raised panel/exposed joinery/etc detail you like. Interiors stained, exteriors painted w/ final coats brushed on. If unpainted, then interesting wood and/or matched veneers. Face frames scribed to fit walls w/o filler pieces.

I personally would also like breadboards, drawers without separate front panels (the box itself fits the opening), upper cab doors w/ lights (meaning glass), drawer and shelf bottoms lined with stainless steel (for wet stuff), steel kickplates on the bottoms of the doors/drawers, horizontal dividers between drawers (so stuff in an overfilled drawer won't jam on the frame), bottom drawers strong enough to stand on with a steel surface on the upper edge of the drawer face (use as step to reach uppermost cabs), contrasting woods where joinery is exposed, a minimum of bling, panel-finished sides/back w/ real feet for free-standing (unfitted) use - but those are fairly weird preferences.

Money was a big factor for me, and I still chose a local full custom guy who uses 3/4" plywood and will do the install. His price was about the same as Shenandoah with MDF, and I can get it fitted to my kitchen. So plywood; meticulous construction; warranty on finish, workmanship, and hardware; firm install date; soft close, full-extension drawers: all that was important. I'm getting cherry, and he only uses heartwood.
For more money, I would probably have preferred frameless cabs, just for the extra space. Mine will be framed.

All I can say is ****THANK YOU**** THANK YOU!!!!!!! and "THANK YOU" to everyone who is responding!

I truly appreciate all of your responses and time that you have taken to give such detailed posts. A lot to absorb and will definitely go back and re-read all of this...

keep the info coming, because I love getting all of your opinions/expertise. This is such valuable information!

My sincere thanks again! ;) Jessica

Well-made solid-wood dovetail drawers are beautiful. I love the craftsmanship of them. However, the stapled and glued plywood drawers in our old cabinets were structurally as good as new after about 30 years of use (with a growing family including teenagers using them so they weren't babied). We like dovetailed solid wood and the cost was acceptable to us so we got them, but I know we didn't need them.

There are all sorts of grades of MDF. There are different grades of plywood too, though I think the worst of the MDF is worse than the worst of the plywood. Our old cabinets were plywood with veneer fronts (slab doors so plywood is pretty common for dimensional stability). The plywood was a so-so grade - when we took them out, we could see that it had noticeable voids. They held up fine except after 30 years, the veneer was chipped on a few of the most used drawers.

Our new cabinets are very good plywood. It was hard to spot any voids and if there were any, they were very tiny.

MDF is denser (i.e. heavier for the same volume) then plywood, but that doesn't mean that it is stronger. When we were shopping, we saw some cabinets made of MDF and the shelves deflected (sagged) very easily when I put a little weight on them. Our plywood shelves don't sag. On the ones that are 36" across and fully loaded with dishes, I can get them to deflect a tiny bit (maybe 1/8 inch) if I pull really hard - a lot less than the unloaded MDF ones did (and some of that is flex in the adjustable shelf mounts). There are also different kinds of strength - in my experience, plywood does well at supporting a load as a shelf. It also holds screws or nails well. MDF isn't as good at either of those.

Our wet bar, pantry and laundry still have the old cabinets. Those are a little thinner plywood (1/2 inch vs 5/8 inch in the new cabinets) and the shelves still don't sag. The bar ones are about 5' wide support only at the ends, but they have a little vertical board at the front of the shelf to strengthen them a bit so they handle a full load of bottles just fine. The pantry shelves at 3' don't have any extra support and can be fully loaded with canned goods without sagging.

So the guy telling you that plywood isn't as strong as MDF and that plywood shelves will sag when MDF won't would lose credibility with me.

I'd also suggest seeing samples of their work before you decide - even with the best of materials, things can be badly built or well built. When we looked at open houses while preparing for our remodel, I notice that some staple and glued drawers had sloppy stapling (not evenly spaced) and overfilled or underfilled glue joints. Both of those bothered me as poor craftsmanship. At least our old stapled and glued drawers were done well.

" You may as well be asking why designer jeans cost $200 but Target jeans cost only $25. Same materials - same sweatshop labor." Sorry, not a valid comparison. You are paying for better cut, better design, better construction in higher end clothes. They are not the same materials, nor same sweatshop labor. Talk to me in 3 months when those Target jeans have fallen apart (personal experience) and high end jeans are still going strong years (even a decade later).
Now men's clothes do have a different scale than women's clothing as far as denim is concerned, but think about suiting. Good tailored clothing has french seams, crap from Target doesn't even get serged right half the time.

Sorry. Off clothing soap box. But, same could be applied to cabinetry. Yes, some appear the same for cheaper price, but what about durability over the years?

I had someone tell me the cabinets they sold were "furniture board" what is that?

cflarherty: basically, it's MDF. See link below and/or google "furniture board."

Here is a link that might be useful: What is furniture board?

MDF and furniture grade particle board (ie furniture board) are no the same thing. Frameless predominates here in Canada so 5\8 to 3\4 inch particle board (ANSI Grade MS or M2 usually) construction is most common. They may well exist but I have never seen a cabinet made from MDF and you rarely see it as the spec'd material on any frameless lines sold here in Canada. Not many (if any) cabinetry companies change their guarantee with a plywood upgrade. I don't think manyof the bigger framed semi-custom lines use even 1\2 inch materials (particle board or ply) for the cabinet carcasses.

Plywood has no greater claim on being wood than particle board. Folks who purchase plywood cabinets and tout them as being 100% wood are only fooling themselves. Wood is wood, plywood is plywood and particle board is particle board. No real craftsman who works with wood is going to start talking about veneered plywood like it is an actual piece of wood.

My Mom had and I have 80's era 1\2 inch custom builder's grade particle board cabinets that have lasted 25 or more years. I have some longer shelves that have sagged but everything is on the wall and shows no signs of going anywhere until I rip them out.

Attached is the best cabinetry guide I have seen.

Here is a link that might be useful: Keidel cabinetry guide

I've built and installed hundreds of cabinets and I would rather use dried horse manure before MDF. No offense to those who like it, but it will degrade faster than plywood or solid wood. It is definitely NOT heirloom quality.
A box out of plywood with a solid wood face frame and solid wood doors will make you happier in the long run.
Of the choices you presented, I'd tenatively go with the Amish. I'm guessing what they build will be more along the lines of what you are looking for and the price will be as well. BUT, I would take a look at what they have built and installed elsewhere before making a commitment.
Good Luck!

I'm no expert but I have talked to experts such as Cook & Cook Cabinetry, who have started using MDF for one part of the cabinet -- the painted panels. Not the frames, not for stained cabinets, only painted, and only if the customer agrees and chooses the MDF. There is a lot of information to be gotten from people who actually make really good cabinetry.

MDF center panels are very common and some lines, Cabico for instance, offer MDF doors for their painted finishes. Again it is for the stability. We don't see a whole lot of face frame construction here (it is mostly offered by companies who sell to the US like Cabico) but I have never heard of anyone using MDF for the frame.

Cabinetry industry has been slow to change in the US so you will still get a lot of folks who won't accept frameless and will tell you that it's an inferior construction method. Many of these same folks are reluctant to embrace newer materials - as they don't work with them a great deal their impressions of the materials are often either dated or a little misinformed. If you want to know the strengths and weaknesses of a material in a given application ask someone who uses it not someone who doesn't.

Materials don't tell the whole story anyway - method of construction has a profound impact on how a cabinet ages.

"Money is no object" for me would be continuous face-frame built-in place cabinets with no interior partitions, and raised-panel end caps. No plywood except the floor of the box and the back. 3/4" or 1/2" baltic birch.
Casey

I realize you are trying to get every detail understood, most people on this site do, however, if you are already looking at inset cabinets, you are looking at at a well constructed cabinet 90% of the time. The tolerances for building those are a lot less than an overlay cabinet. The cabinet maker really needs to know what he is doing. The posters above are correct about many things. You are not buying heirloom cabinetry for that price, but you're buying caibnets that will last 30 years or longer. it is more realistic to think you will get sick of the finish or color long before the cabinet wears out. Don't worry about a cabinet maker not installing their own cabinets, that rarely happens. With all the aging you want on cabinets, you definately want all wood and with all that aging you want, it shouldn't be that hard to figure out which company near you does it the best. there really are very few that can do ALL that you mentioned (worm holes, dings that actually look old rather than new, etc)

I just reread your post...If you go Amish, you will have to find yourself a designer of some kind. Hartville sounds like your best bet at this point bec of the guy you are working with and $50K that includes install and tax for a 4000 sq ft home does not sound out of line to me especailly with all the specialty finishes you want.

We did a fairly high-end kitchen renovation, with a wonderful cabinetmaker. He recommended MDF for the fir-veneered flush panels with a very narrow reveal, in a solid fir frame, because the tolerances were so narrow -- he wanted the stability of MDF. If we had opted for solid wood construction only, then the tolerances would have had to be changed to accommodate that. A completely trustworthy, meticulous carpenter, and a more-than-satisfactory finished product.

I remember, too, being surprised years ago when I learned how expensive that Baltic plywood is, and how desirable for cabinetmaking.
Lynn

********************* Thank you to everyone so far for posting! ***************

Your knowledge/opinions/comments/advice have been very helpful during this build process! Although exciting, it is overwhelming too! ;)
This site has really been valuable; I just love it!

My sincere thanks to ALL!

In addition to pricing out the specified cabinet construction, you NEED to go see the types of cabinets that you are considering. I looked at some "custom cabinetry" that came in less than 1/2 of the what I ended up buying but the construction, the finish and the quality of the work was not what I was willing to accept. They used baltic plywood, blah blah blah but the fact was they just did not look good nor have the high quality of workmanship that I wanted. I knew immediately that I would be sacrificing the quality of workmanship at the reduced price. Custom does not mean good quality! It simply means that they make it to order.

There is a feel to how the cabinets look and handle when you open the doors and drawers..... It could be the little things like the type of hardware they use for their shelves, what type of finish they do on the interiors of the boxes, how tight the tolerances are, how nicely the drawers line up etc. 1/4 inch tolerance (gaps) versus 1/8 inch tolerance is a big difference in how the cabinets look. They can tell you that they do dovetailed hardwood drawers but I have seen plenty of badly done dovetailed drawers. Again, you need to see the quality of the work.

It is better to see a home that has been used for a few weeks to months, rather than in the final stages of construction. It is better for you to see how it "wears". If the cabinets are not wearing well that quickly after construction, then you don't go with the company (a reason for one company I rejected)

A reasonable cabinet maker should be able to find you to a happy customer that would be wiling to open their door as a reference.

Good luck!

In one of the posts above, it was mentioned to make the lower drawers strong enough to stand on for reaching upper cabinets. It made me remember when I was a kid, my parents remodeled. My mom had a few bread boards installed above the bottom drawer. It worked great for us kids to reach the glasses above. It never broke, but I don't think my parents ever stood on it ;-)