Veneer is a much greener choice. It takes the desirable wood and allows say 100 people to enjoy that tree instead of just 2 that would consume it for solid wood cabinets. Veneering over plywood is very tricky and usually most top quality cabinet makers won't do it. THe problem is that you have to have a very very smooth substrate, and plywood just isn't smooth enough or contains knots. Those knots and grain patterns of the substrate plywood can telegraph through the veneer and show. That's NOT what you want in a job. It's a myth that plywood is somehow more "real wood" than is MDF. Both are composed of wood! Plywood is very very thin veneer layers laid cross grain to each other and glued and pressed together. Good quality plywood has no internal voids and all the layers are composed of the same quality wood material, such as baltic birch. Poor quality plywood is crap. It has skips and voids and big knotholes etc. MDF is small offcuts from the milling process separated into the basic fibers of the tree. When those fibers are combined with glues and pressed, the grains go every which way, which creates strength. It also creates an extremely smooth surface which is perfect for furniture construction. The terms partical board, and MDF are routinely interchanged without much thought as to the fact that they really aren't interchangeable. Partical board has visible wood fibers and can be compressed at a density of anywhere from around 14 pounds per square inch for the cheap round bed tables that fall apart when you put a drink on them to 60 pounds per square inch with better quality glues that can sit in water for an hour or two and show no ill effects. MDF is smaller and more invisible fibers and compressed under higher pressure. It's actually a lot more wood per square inch than any plywood is if you want to get technical! Ask any cabinet installer. They don't prefer plywood for durabiliy. They prefer it because it's a lot lighter and makes their job easier when hanging. When cabnets are made from factory sourced desirable wood plywood, then the cherry or teak or whatever is the desirable grain is the final layer on the plywood and is done on quality no knots or voids plywoood at a cross grain to the previous layer with good quality glues. The desirable wood is generally thicker than shop applied veneer, so even if there is a problem with the substrate, the veneer won't telegraph the issue. It's pretty easy to take that good quality plywood and edge band it and create slab cabinet doors. I could do that, and I don't even own a panel saw, just a good table saw. However, it's pretty difficult to take any plywood, good quality or not, and apply a thin veneer to it in shop without it telegraphing the plywood substrate at some point. A good quality vacuum press will suck that thin veneer right to the substrate and mold it to it, and that includes any substrate graining patterns if they exist. That's why MDF is the traditional substance used for veneer work. Yes, you can find thicker veneers out there to go on plywood, but they are specialty items and pretty expensive and usually reserved for fine furniture rather than cabinetry. If you want your cabinets made like fine furniture, you can certainly have it done. Just be prepared to pay the labor and materials to have it done---and be prepared to take those cabinets with you when you move like they do in Europe. THe next owner may not appreciate the quality and paint over them or rip them out.

Nosoccermom, I'm not sure if you are asking about my kitchen or the white kitchen. In both cases the doors are 5 piece with the panel recessed like for typical shaker doors. The drawers (in our case the drawers less than 8" high) are slab, i.e. a single flat piece of wood for the front). In our kitchen, as you can see in the picture, the taller drawers are 5 piece with the same profile as the doors - rails and stiles raised with a recessed flat center. Here is a more close up picture showing the bin pull on the top rail of one of the tall drawers and a bit of the slab drawer front above with its bin pull:

i'm good with the top drawer being a slab, but... for shaker style, if you have a lot of wide deep drawers instead of lower cabinets, i'd switch them, yes. if you only have a single rank of typical not as wide drawers, i'd be more likely to say leave them be. can we see a plan or photo? if you wanted contemporary/glam i'd think that you'd want every thing slab without shaker at all ... ?

Ask to see a spec sheet on the drawer fronts. If you're going with a flat panel door, the taller drawer fronts may be a raised panel, which holds up better against the stress on a large drawer front. Custom cabinet makers will use suppliers like Conestoga for doors and drawer fronts. They can make them and ship them, faster, cheaper and better than you can in most shops. Ask him to show you an example of a door and a 5-piece drawer front. Finish is also important, find out about that before you put down any money. A clean room and conversion varnish is imperative. And insist on a pay schedule that's 30% upfront, 30% right before delivery and %40 upon completion. Two of the nightmares that show up on this forum are bad finish on a custom cabinet and the contractor's been paid but won't finish the installation or fix a problem.