Something I left off of my last post to another thread similar to this one only asking about Kraftmaid. There are truly differences in the types of each. I would choose furniture grade board over Chinese plywood for instance. I have not checked yet to see if the all ply Mid C cabinets I'm looking at are chinese plywood. Likely they are cause the price is so low! Anyway we missed this at the home expo in March, but my sales guy told me they were there and had a goldfish bowl with both plywood and furniture board soaking for 2 weeks. They displayed it at the expo inviting everyone to try to break the furniture board, and no one could do it. The plywood was a total mess. It just depends. Whatever you get make sure it's the best quailty and I would think you'll be fine. I noticed for instance that the KM furn board was thicker and appeared to be better quality than the Mid C furniture board.

I seem to have gotten confused on the Shenandoah construction thicknesses. For one, sides are 1/2". So disregard whatever I noted if you're considering this line. Funny, I'm looking over these nearly 40 year old junkers that are still standing. They were even uninstalled and shuffled around 30 years ago. The cheap wood grained laminate doors had been replaced. The sides and back seem to be a 1/4" particle board type product. Some of it also looks like luan but is painted and might be particle board. One shelf is loose and I can see the particles on the box side. Particle board 3/4" shelves chipping along the edge but strong. It seems to be solid 3/4" framing for the faces and hanging rail. They are still standing and doing their job! The side panel on the sink base has popped out and it's really bad construction otherwise. The boxes were painted and doors replaced so they don't look as bad as all that. The painted raised panel replacement doors have held up well for nearly 30 years. They look to be solid wood. The only real damage to the finish is on the raised panel edge of the two drawer fronts under the counter. They've lost finish and are chippy because the counter's drip edge doesn't project out far enough. I'm very surprised to see that situation on a lot of store display installations. The cabinets are just about even with the 25" counter edge. That's bad news for finishes. I'll be getting 26" counters for a good drip edge to protect the finish below. Right, the finish will probably not last 30 years and I'll have to deal with repainting whatever I get. I doubt the stains these days hold up that long either. A lot of them look layered and baked on like the paints to me. But hopefully the cabinets themselves will be decently built and still holding together well. I don't know why that would change unless someone was hanging on the doors or overloading areas with very heavy items, as livewire mentioned. The older builder type homes from 40-50 years or so ago seem to get there. They can just look dated at this point. Maybe they all do this but Shenandoah is calling their mdf type cabinets 'engineered wood' which I think is misleading since it makes it sound like standard construction is plywood.

I had my decision made to go with Shiloh Hickory cabinets in beaded inset and Richmond door. The cost for my large amount of cabinets was reasonible. I must now change wood as I spent 2 hours at a granite yard today and could only find almost black granites that look ok with the hickory cabinet door. I have to start over with another wood . I am disappointed. I will probably go with Maple now as I took a few maple doors with me and found a granite that look absolutely beautiful with the Maple The maple stain is gunstock and the granite was Alaskan White. I feel like the granite with probably be out of my price range when they give me the final figures. I do think it pays to shop around. I went to Reisterstown Lumber and found their prices to be competitive on Medallion and Swartz to be competitive on Shiloh. J&S lumber in Landisville is good for Showplace. I do think that lumber yards and independent shops do better with design help and pricing. Don't overspend and take your time shopping around. Give the cabinet places a chance to make things work well for you. I have had poor design help form some and very good from others. Some gave me a bunch of small cabinets which cost more than one large cabinet. Some accessories are no more expensive when purchased with the cabinets. Molding costs as much as taller cabinets. Drawers are sometimes less expensive than pull out trays. Not all designers try to work these things out. i have had to ask for drawers instead of pull outs for pantry cabinets and they priced out 30% less. I want a corner sink cabinet and the cost for one line was more than twice of another, so I had the designer use a diagonal sink from and return fillers and the cost was less. Reading this board has definitely helped with knowing what will help bring costs down and what is worth paying for to have a more functional space.

Real wood, even the much more stable composites like plywood and MDF, swell with moisture and release that moisture when the air dries out. That will leave minute cracks at any joints. Today's professional coatings are much more flexible than the old oils of yesteryear, so the cracking won't be as apparent, but it will still occur. "Real wood" for cabinets is a term bandied about by the uneducated kutside the industry. Realistically, cabinets haven't been constructed of all solid wood panels since plywood was invented. Solid wood panels are the most unstable form of wood that exists. Plywood was a great leap forward in furniture construction. As was MDF. Technically, MDF is just as much "real wood" as is plywood if not more so because it's able to be much denser--To have more wood per cubic inch than plywood. They are both made of cross grain wood, it's just the plywood uses layers of cross grain veneers while the MDF uses tiny wood particles where the fibers lock together like wool does to make felt. Both can have issues with moisture if exposed, with the unprotected MDF swelling and the plywood delaminating If you want a painted cabinet with zero cracks anywhere, get thermofoil instead. You're not really wanting the natural characteristics of wood. You want plastic. Thermofoil will give you the look that you desire. Thermofoil wraps come in many many different colors today, and they are much more durable--and attractive--than yesterday's thermofoil. Just look at Martha Stewart's cabinets. No paint there. All high tech European thermofoil that most would be hard pressed to tell wasn't paint. Solid MDF that mimics a stile and rail construction will be the next most stable. It will not have any real joints to move as it would be a solid piece. The downside to that is that you aren't able to achieve sharp definition at the corners, so it always looks a bit "off". It won't really save you much in costs over thermofoil though if you have it hand painted instead of sprayed. However, hand painting instead of spraying can help with the perceived "plasticy" look, as can hand applying a slight glaze over a sprayed coat. That will also be an upcharge. Multipart MDF with an actual free floating inner panel and separate stiles and rails will be the next most stable when it comes to cracks. It's plenty strong enough and durable enough for most situations. Just like the solid MDF, if it's hand painted instead of sprayed, It's a much more realistic look because of the multiple parts and you will not be able to visually tell the difference between it and solid wood if hand painted. If it's sprayed, it tends to look a bit "too smooth" to the experts. The average person will not be able to see nor will they care. Next in line in stability comes wood rails and stiles and a MDF center panel. This helps a bit with the cracking between the panel and the frames, as that is often the most apparent spot, especially if the doors were painted after assembly which is very common. The spot where the stiles and rails meet have the wood grain going in different directions, so you will still get cracking at that spot, much more than a MDF frame. As I said, with the new latex paints, it's less apparent than with the old oil paints. Hand painting with the minor errors that entails will also help it to achieve the less than perfect natural look. The most prone to hygroscopic behavior is solid wood--which can be a bit misleading. Most "solid wood" recessed panel doors are not really solid wood. They are plywood panels with wood frames very much behaving like the solid wood with MDF panels I explained above. There is zero advantage of a plywood over MDF for the center panel if you are using wood frames. The MDF is probably cheaper for the same look. "Solid" raised panel doors (or solid reverse recessed panel doors) are the most prone to potential cracking. The panels are not "solid" in that they are created out of a single piece of wood. That would expand and contract horribly! The panels are constructed of several solid pieces laminated together and then machined with a profile before being placed into the stiles and rails. In addition to all of the usual suspect spots for cracking, these add the potential of cracking occurring between the laminated wood strips. They are the most authentic construction for very old homes, as plywood and MDF did not exist 150 years ago, but they will also give you the most authentic look. That means the potential of hairline cracks pretty much everywhere. All in all, the less processed product that the cabinets are made of, the more "defects" it will have. The more man made and processed a product is, the more "perfect" it becomes, with little variation in construction or appearance. More "natural looking" is a polite way to say "has natural defects that would not occur in a man made product". Some people want something expensive to look "shiny and new" always and those are the people who have little tolerance for the variations found in nature. Those people are the ones that should look to thermofoil to give them their desired "maintenance free and new" look. Some want their new kitchens to immediately look as though they've been there for years---with the natural patina of time built in. Most of us are in between, and we usually have our budget interjecting it's own constraints on our aesthetics.