You have gotten confused on the details of the cabinets you were looking at online as rta the face frames are 3/4 thick and the plywood boxes are 1/2 thick. I own and operate a kitchen and bath store in orlando. I specialize in the affordable products as well as having high end products to offer. I often wonder about those that post on here as to why RTA is not considered more. I can ship out directly to anywhere in the US 75 different RTA cabines that are assembled by the company that stocks them before they are put on the truck! You do not even have to put them together. I also have several domestic brands that are in the same price range. Many do not even use cam locks any more they are to be glued and stapled like most domestic brands are that are not in the Wode Mode business model as cabinet makers. I have one brand that ships out assembled with a lifetime warranty. They even do inset door styles that everyone seems to want on here. I have another brand that imports 60" wide by 66" wood hoods with raised panel arch vallance over the cook top and pull out spice racks in the towers. They are not as nice as stanici but they are not the cost either. Both have their place in society. I offer out of my store 20' of cabinetry in any configuration with 30" 36" or 42" wall cabinets with crown and light rail 10 level 1 granite stones to chose from removal of exsisting kitchen, installation of new kitchen and appliances painting of the kitchen area and any knobs you want from my supplier which has 25,000 different ones for $7,000-$10,500 I have inset door styles, flat slab bamboo, raised panels, applied moldings, painted cabinets, glazes, shakers, no name I have at least 1 of everything some will be looking for. When I am done with their kitchen only someone in the industry will be able to tell if the cabinets are imports most of the time. The trade offf is you are dealing with in stock product. No 2 companies stock the exact same cabinet list. It is just the nature of the beast. You can be a smart shopper and find the best price that gives you what you like or you can go for brand name recognition for bragging rights when compnay is over and conviently forget to tell your friends you look wealthy but have no retirement funds cause you buy everything on name brand to feel more important. RTA will not suit everyone but the truth is it fits most Beaver Cleaver neighborhoods very well. Which is where most of americans live that can afford to remodel thier kitchen

We love our Scherrs cabinets. They are the first group in the photo gallery on Scherr's site. Here's a picture: They were worth every penny, IMHO. Scherr's did some really complex stuff for us and it all came together well. They made clipped, fluted corners and 5/4 drawer fronts I wanted that they had never tried before. They made integrated raised end panels which was a first for them as well. As for service, I had a problem with a long drawer front that warped (it was solid wood) and they sent out a replacement very quickly (at no cost of course). The cabinets fit together tightly and are very sturdy. You need a good set of bar clamps to properly put them together. The raised panel door fronts are very solidly made and don't rattle at all because they use rubber spaceballs to hold the panels tightly in place. Leon and his brother are very quality conscious and really want to please the customer, in my experience. They started out as custom cabinetmakers. Like many small shops, they built the cases and bought the doors from large national companies like Conestoga. The reason they got into the door business in the first place was because they couldn't find good enough quality doors from the national companies for the custom cabinets they were building for customers. They then became a major source for high quality doors for other custom cabinetmakers and finally branched out into manufacturing the cases again. Kinda full circle. I asked Leon about plywood sides and he told me that it wasn't worth the extra money, even though he stood to benefit if we opted for it. The melamine boxes have been very durable. The melamine sink cabinet didn't suffer any damage whatsoever even though I had water under there for weeks from couple of slow leaks from a faulty filter that would have damaged your typical wood cabinet. I ran a bead of silicone caulk around the corners of the base to seal it when I assembled it and as a result the cabinet looks brand new despite the floods. Their cabinets are of better quality than almost anything I have seen elsewhere. I also have some IKEA cabinets in other rooms of our house. We installed IKEA at my son's house since it is his starter home and the IKEAs were the cheapest plus they fit the space well. I like IKEA and their quality is very good, but not as good as Scherr's. The box on the Scherr's cabinet is more sturdy and fits together more tightly. IKEA also has a limited number of styles and doesn't have all the sizes some cabinet companies have. For instance, I needed 36" tall cabinets and they didn't have them. I also needed other widths they didn't carry. With Scherr's I saved a few thousand bucks over the up-scale semi-custom I was considering at first. And of the 22 cabinets in our kitchen, only 6 are stock sizes. Everything was made to exactly fit and waste not a square inch. However, if you can limit yourself the the IKEA sizes, they are a wonderful cabinet also and I have no complaints with mine. Matching Scherr's doors to their boxes might be a good way to save some money and still get the look you want. Plus you could have Scherr's make any special cabinets you need.

If it sounds too good to be true, it IS. "one of the largest importers of cabinets from China in the U.S" Directly from their website. If you want quality US made RTA cabinetry, it IS available. Sherrs. Barker. Conestoga.

At my last job, I was setting up a showroom. I had the opportunity to carry any brand of cabinet that I wanted. We needed an entry level line. I had many distributors courting me, bringing samples etc. So, I had several of the Chinese cabinets sitting around for a while. A few stank so badly right out of the box that they went in the trash immediately. Most of the door samples had poor joinery, poor sanding, and an even worse paint finish. From 3' out they looked average. Closer, or touching them, yech. Fabuwood was the best of the lot. Damning with faint praise. Their Chinese knockoff Blum hardware wasnt installed with the greatest precision, so it got slightly bound up when you pulled the drawers in and out. The joinery was much improved over their brethren, but when I pulled the "plywood" shelf out that looked so good on the surface, it had skips and voids in the ply internally. Those had been filled in any of the exposed plywood edges of the boxes, but not the shelves. And when I cut it apart, the story was the same. The fake Blum hardware on the doors was actually pretty good. I had no problems with it over the almost 3 years that I left the sample sitting in my showroom---to sell against I went with Aristokraft for my entry level line. It was actually cheaper. And made in Indiana. Yes, Chinese hardware on it too, but at least not the fake Gucci purse type. No name fakery attempted. I never sold their plywood version, as it is a completely unnecessary marketing hype upgrade to get a good quality cabinet. The furniture board construction was a fine cabinet for the money at a decent price point. Realky, if you are looking at Chinese sourced anything because of budget, you need to wait and save more. A kitchen project will quickly get you in over your head on the budget front. Permanently installed cabinets is NOT where you need to save pennies.