Frameless kitchen cabinets, also called full access or European construction, are sold on storage. This episode argues that is the wrong reason to choose them.

What you gain is access: roughly an inch and a half to an inch and three quarters more opening on a base cabinet, and the ability to run a drawer or roll out pantry up to 36 inches wide with no center partition, where framed construction generally needs a center stile past about 24 inches. What you give up is roughly 8 to 15 percent on the price of the boxes, any possibility of inset doors in a semi custom line, and three things nobody raises in a showroom: the front edge you see between the doors is the box edge banding rather than a finished frame, crown molding and under cabinet lighting need build up strips to land on, and that banded edge takes the knocks a solid wood fr ...