Review Detail

Schrock Cabinetry thinks highly of their product. Their shiny brochures and website photos showcase cabinets in beautiful, stylish kitchen and laundry spaces intended to inspire. What you see is not what you will get. Unless something changes at Schrock, the entry-level products they create should be avoided altogether.

We were never under the impression Schrock Select would be high-end. We did however expect the product would be manufactured without defects. For $1,000 we purchased a simple base cabinet and two modestly sized uppers. Construction is particle board with natural wood faces. We upgraded the uppers to plywood sides which are covered with a thin wood veneer (laminate).

Order One. Each cabinet was of such low quality they were rejected. A casual glance found numerous pieces of the wood veneer chipped from each cabinet. The edges of almost all of the veneer covering were frayed or fractured suggesting the tool used to cut the sheets is dull. It is probably not changed often as a cost savings measure for Schrock. The fact the laminate or veneer is already weakened is likely a contributor to the ease with which it breaks both in production and likely after the cabinets are installed in an unsuspecting customer’s home.

One additional problem was obvious on the 42-inch base cabinet: the left-side door would not close at the top. No amount of hinge adjustment served to bring the door into alignment. This suggests the wood was warped and should never have been used in the first place. Each cabinet included an “Inspected by” sticker suggesting someone examined the product for damage. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Order Two. Our local vendor communicated with Schrock Cabinetry about the problems with our order. This translated into their believing the cabinets were damaged by the carrier as the second order of cabinets arrived double-boxed with large foam pads between the inner and outer boxes. Like the first order there was no evidence of external freight damage nor any reason to believe the damage occurred anywhere except during production.

The same problems were found on two of the three cabinets. Large chips were missing from the same fractured veneer. The largest chip was out of the left-side of the 42-inch base. We have decided to keep this unit as it will be built-in, the sides unseen and quite frankly, our expectations of Schrock are so low at this stage there seems little chance the quality will improve if we try a third time. Unfortunately, one of the uppers has so large a chip out of the veneer it cannot be missed nor easily fixed. This cabinet has been reordered.

Order Three. The 24 by 36-inch upper was picked up on 4/16/16. We chose to open the box the cabinet was shipped in and no surprise, the cabinet was damaged. Two minor abrasions causing loss of laminate in two spots on the left side are present. We have decided to cut our losses and I will repair this face as best I can. It seems decidedly unlikely we could expect anything better from this company.
Schrock Cabinetry has two principle problems: (1) they believe savings are being realized by overuse of the tool used to cut their wood veneers. Any savings are lost when the product is flawed before leaving the plant. Perhaps most customers who purchase these low-end cabinets don’t have so discerning an eye but in the long run the edges will not survive much beyond gentle use. I will probably apply a secondary varnish to strengthen the edges. (2) It would appear Schrock is not committed to Quality at any level.

Craftsmanship probably left this company a long time ago. Instead, bored assemblers go through the steps to construct inexpensive boxes covered in the thinnest veneer and at the end of the line a sightless low-wage employee places inspection stickers without so much as a glance. Add to these issues Rough Handling as it seems patently clear no one at Schrock cares about what they manufacture or how damaged the product is they ship to unsuspecting customers. As suggested at the start of this review, avoid Schrock Cabinetry completely.