Good grief. Custom cabinets are still built with 3/4 inch plywood. Those cabinets are below good custom cabinets but above the cheap line at Home Depot. They're low grade plywood at least, not mdf. The cabinet in the first photo doesn't look like the other two. The face frame bottom rail is unfinished and looks like plywood, and has been attached to the side of the carcass. The second photo shows the face frame dadoed to accept the side of the carcass - a better way to securely attach and it covers the raw edge of the plywood. The first photo face frame is unpainted and looks like it might have been cobbled together to fix an error. Can't tell what kind of wood the second photo frame is, probably a hardwood of some type. 1/2 ply is fine for small cabinets that won't be carrying any weight. I wouldn't want granite on a cabinet over 36" made of 1/2 ply.

"better quality paint and more options" . do you want painted cabinets? A good quality painted cabinet will always cost more. Does wolf give you full extension glides and full overlay doors as standard? Don't get cheap painted cabinets. Be careful with "upgrade charges" with Wolf and note the warranty. If your GC has a kitchen design person that mainly works with MidContinent that should be fine and to keep costs down stick with basic stained wood cabinets in a classic style. Upgrade your space with counter/backsplash/hardware/floor...etc. Find out how your GC actually does the kitchen : does he have someone that just does CAD drawing and he orders...or is there an actual kitchen designer to refine your desires and spend hours with you. Does he send you to a Kitchen Shop with their designer and they work with his project foreman? Does he give you an "allowance?" , and you spec it out with the design team and cabinetry of your choice and if you come out "over", you pick up extra charges?...Or does he charge labour and you pay line item , up front pricing through a design team you choose? You want to know the options and process ahead of time. Usually at the onset you would be looking at a few cabinet lines . If he is a GC you are staring to feel confident about, and he has a designer, and has been using MidContinent, then I might go further with getting an idea about process: what are the steps he follows. I would not like it if there is no actual designer ,nor does he send you to a kitchen showroom .

roarah- OP wanted to know if a vent hood was possible. I merely posted the pictures of kitchen w/tall ceilings to show that vent hoods were possible. they weren't meant to be guidelines for what would work in her kitchen. Ditto the first groupings. It was just to show very tall ceilings with an open concept. And if you prefer those cheap, melamine ugly cabinets to white shaker cabinets, then perhaps you should be on a site that repurposes vintage items. The op specifically has stated she doesn't like them or the layout. She already has the budget and doesn't need to wait a year to dream about what she wants. Zalkos link are very modern, newly made cabinets and don't look anything like the 1985 uglies. maybe OP doesn't want to do an ultra modern kitchen.

Thank you for this list of features. I hope you get lots of answers--I'm not a resource on that though! I'm in the homework phase on cabinets for a kitchen remodel and trying to understand what's most important to look for and where the quality/price tradeoffs will make a big difference down the road. I'm only as far as frameless, full overlay, soft close on specific features. Ours is maybe a mid-range(?) studs-out remodel (I have no idea what Houzz-ers think is mid-range--so many of the kitchens here look like they're out of our ballpark). You might pick up some thoughts from the detailed post by The Cook's Kitchen in this thread https://www.houzz.com/discussions/5647040/white-shaker-battle-ikea-vs-the-rest-of-the-cabinet-world. There's discussion of terms they describe as buzzwords to upsell. I also want to know what I can about the environmental cost of the materials that go into ours and want to work with manufacturers as close to home as possible (I live in western Washington state).