General Contractor Houston Cabinets
Cabinets consist of six-sided wooden boxes or "carcases" closed on five sides with a door on the sixth. Additionally they are the most cost effective way to decorate your kitchen, bathroom, and garages.
A cabinet wall, and a counter with sink and backsplash.
Cabinet faces. Solid wood is an effective choice for cabinet parts seen by people such as face frames, doors, drawer fronts, and so forth. Traditional-style kitchen cabinetry remains highly popular, although some signs point to consumers being willing to compromise on choices to achieve better value for the dollar. Among solid wood choices used for cabinet doors, cherry is more expensive than maple or oak in most cases. Solid wood is more expensive than plywood which, in turn, is more expensive than particle board or similar sheet goods. Some products need special protection from moisture.
Cabinet body. The cabinet carcase is usually made from plywood or high-quality particle board, particularly for those flat sections which don't need to be shaped, such as shelves, cabinet sides, or drawer bottoms. Typical plywood thickness in these applications varies from ⅜- to ¾-inch. Stiffness and strength are important factors since cabinets are expected not to bend or sag and be able to support a heavy load. The best choices for strength are plywood and higher-quality particle board. Stiffness increases rapidly with shelf thickness; regardless of material choice, a ¾" shelf is 73% stiffer than a ⅝" shelf though only 20% thicker. Shelves made of some particle board formulations, especially where not reinforced, may sag or deform. Particle board strength and rigidity varies by formulation and is determined by the resin that binds together its wood particles. Plywood carcases are usually assembled with screws and nails while particle board carcases do not hold screws or nails as well and therefore frequently use glue, groove joints, or mechanical fasteners such as confirmat-cam assemblies. Generally, plywood-carcase cabinets are more expensive than particle-board-carcase cabinets.
Cabinet frames and doors may be fashioned from solid wood (typically a species of hardwood), medium density fiberboard (MDF), particle board, plywood, or a combination, and may include lamination of a surface coating over these core materials. A floating panel in a door could be hardwood-veneer plywood captured within a solid wood or MDF frame. Solid wood and MDF can be edge-shaped, e.g., to round or pattern the edges of doors, drawer fronts, or face frames. Particle board, once manufactured, cannot be edge-shaped suitably. Plywood cannot be shaped without revealing its veneer core, often considered unsightly, though edge-shaped furniture-grade plywood with thin plies is considered attractive for limited uses. MDF, once shaped, can be coated uniformly with flexible veneers such as thermofoil or can be painted. It can also be covered with wood veneer or high-pressure laminate but only if the edge profile is square or approximately so. Today many cabinet doors and drawer fronts utilize an MDF core.
Doors and drawer fronts may also be fashioned of particle board surfaced with high-pressure laminate. Natural wood offers its subtle combination of color, grain, pore pattern, variable absorption and smoothness of finish, and variation with viewing angle and lighting condition. The appearance of natural wood can only be achieved with solid wood components (wherever edges are shaped) or possibly veneer (where they are not); as already pointed out, the two approaches can be combined in a single cabinet. Various transparent grain-revealing finishes including shellac, lacquer, varnish, or polyurethane have been devised. A built-up finish may optionally utilize diverse pigments, dyes, bleaches, glazes, or wood fillers that may highlight contrasting colorants. Finishes can be applied by brush or spray and may comprise many separately applied layers. Accordingly, finishes formulated by differing manufacturers do not, in general, exactly match.
Trade-offs: solid wood versus particle board. Solid wood and plywood are durable and strong, but are more costly and offer less dimensional stability at manufacture than particle board. For cabinets and surface finishes that may sustain damage during long use, serviceability is a consideration. Solid wood can be repaired by furniture refinishing to achieve excellent matches to surrounding wood finishes. By contrast veneered MDF and particle board are good choices where cabinets will be well-cared-for, or where service life is projected as intermediate where the kitchen will be remodeled approximately every 15 years.
