MDF kitchen doors with a foil wrap - durability

[julianm]

I`ve looked at a lot of the kitchen threads on here. I understand there is a body of thought insisting real wood is good & powdery mashed up resin stuff is horrible. We`re after a sort of off-white or cream colour finish. I had a look in showrooms yesterday & despite peering closely & scratching away with my thumbnail at a number of different finishes came away pretty much unable to tell the difference between 5 panel ash/birch & the foiled MDF stuff. The pricing varies such that the `best` is aboout 2.5 times more expensive than the cheapest. All the carcases are the same.
We`re not going to be paying for a bespoke hand crafted kitchen in exposed polished hardwood so the question is - have you gone for the foil wrap & been happy with durability & function? The doors & carcases are given an extensive guarantee, but I wouldn`t want to be making a claim in a few years anyway.
I`d really appreciate opinions based on living with the product.
Many thanks.

[Simpo Two]

After about 10 years the plastic wood effect layer can start to peel away at the edges. It could probably be stuck back with impact adhesive, but a fiddly to do.

[ColinM50]

Bought new made to emasure doors for our kitchen about eight ish years ago. 29 doors in a sort of maple foil. Gave them each door size, chose the design we wanted in fact we modified one of their designs and they now include "my door" in their range. I measured each door for hinge position and they drilled each door to take existing hinges so the whole job was adoddle. So far no problems with them at all. Cost us a little over £1k, so around £35 a door but this was a while ago. No idea of current prices except a mate bought some last year and he said they're considerably cheaper than new doors from Howdens/B&Q etc.

We used this company

http://www.doors2size.co.uk/

Their main business is CNC machining of mdf for all sorts of businesses, might be interesting to look at their main website http://www.cncrouting.co.uk/

[julianm]

Thanks a lot for the comments. Really useful tip Colin - that company will be very handy to remanufacture some copies of original `20`s doors in alcoves when we remove the golden pine `70`s louvres in place at the moment!