After ten years, my expensive kitchen cabinets with acrylic laminates look quite terrible. I’m limited to tearing them out and installing new cabinets instead. This is the entire tale.
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It appears that you skimped on your cabinets, and the pictures don’t depict typical wear and tear spots. Maybe you thought a cheap cabinet would be impervious to cats? Is this post intended only to drive traffic to your article?
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@Gordon Whoa, I had no idea Holiday Kitchens produced inexpensive cabinets! In order to help readers make better long-term decisions for their own kitchens, I wrote this post to share my experience. It seems like you’re trying to hide the fact that MDF isn’t the ideal option for those looking for durable, repairable kitchen cabinets that can withstand frequent use.
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@Dacosta Reviews for vacation kitchens are barely 3.5 stars, and many of them are really negative. A well-built MDF cabinet with a laminate finish ought to last for years. Your cabinets’ finish appears painted, especially in the area surrounding the farmhouse sink, and the door finish is relatively thin. A real laminate wears like iron and has a thickness of roughly 1/16". You might, at most, spot a little area of delamination, but not the one in your picture.
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@Hudson I believe what you’ve said thus far also supports her argument for solid wood.
There are legitimate wear benefits to solid wood; if laminate truly wore like iron, I wouldn’t be saying this. particularly on corners.
It’s not like you’re going to re-laminate anything either—solid wood is very easily restored.
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@Jason The reason the OP is promoting solid wood is that they had a negative experience with something they bought. I visit homes where the 1980s laminate faced cabinets are in excellent condition, save for the ever-popular oak hand grip at the bottom, which has deteriorated and the finish failed.
Laminate can be better or worse, depending on your needs, I’m not saying. Although most consumers would pick a wood cabinet for aesthetic reasons alone, most business organizations use laminate because it has a finish that lasts longer than poly or painted wood.
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@Hudson I suspect the real reason most institutions are using laminate is simply cost.
Solid hardwood would be beyond the budget of most businesses.
Laminate is also cheaper to install I’m sure, I doubt most installers have any real experience working with solid hardwoods.
A wooden finish might require new stain before a laminate finish is completely destroyed, but the laminate will probably be peeling at the corners.
If you were really using hardwoods, the strength comparison would surely go to solid wood but you couldn’t just teach people to do that in a short time.
Applying laminates is surely cheaper, but dealing with problems in laminates and MDF is why I became interested in real carpentry.
Something in solid maple or a nice solid wood is more expensive, sure, but you’ll never even be able to consider the same dimensions working with MDF, it doesn’t have the requisite strength.
There are many things possible with solid wood that are compromised to use MDF, and those are all the things I’m most interested in - fine joinery, continuous grains rather than veneers, dovetails, etc…
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Those don’t appear to be fancy. For years, in high traffic locations like doctor’s offices and restaurant service stations, we have built laminate cabinets over MDF, but nothing that looks like what you’ve showed has ever been done.
You should get considerably more years out of a high-quality laminate than you currently do.
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@Jordan I was just curious whether you follow up with your customers to find out how the product is going after a number of years. Or if you simply think that everything is OK since they haven’t bothered to get in touch with you (and why would they unless you have a ten-year warranty)?
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@Dacosta Yes, I still stay in touch with a lot of these clients.
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Looks like you cheaped out on your cabinets and the photos don’t show normal wear and tear areas. Maybe you expect low cost cabinet to be cat proof? Maybe this post is just to get clicks for your article?