Site visit with a contractor we feed. Their customer is wanting a frameless kitchen in an older masonry home. Were talking the old hollow high fired masonry block walls, zero insulation, zero vapor barrier, partial basement, partial crawl space, and even with HVAC and extra dehumidification the home is damp. The basement area while not wet, is clearly just damp even with many coats of interior damp-proofing rolled on the walls. I peeked under the crawlspace and there is zero vapor barrier (bare dirt). The area under the kitchen will be completely vapor barriered and sealed internally when the kitchen is gutted but the remainder of the crawlspace will be left or they may try to lay poly on grade but it wont be sealed to the walls in the rest of the crawl space. They have no plan to fur out the interior face of the exterior walls (cabinet walls) in the kitchen but will likely apply roll on damp proofing (drylock) before plastering (which is a mistake in my opinion but..)..
My concern is the PB core cabs given the moisture. I dont have cost effective access to veneer core in the material they would like not that that would make completely comfortable either especially pertaining to the cab backs directly against the exterior walls on the north side of the home (shady). We kicked around reducing the cab depth by whatever is needed to apply sheetgoods/vapor barrier to the exterior walls behind the cabs. The kitchen is a tight galley style and the homeowner is very reluctant to frame in the walls even by an inch. Again, major mistake in my opinion. Risking your cabs, and to improve the health of your home by losing an inch (or less) doesnt make sense.
Moisture is completely covered in our contract and the contractor has had the conversation with the owner and of course we have had convo with the contractor.
I have not had the opportunity to leave a hygrometer in the space for a period of time but I really dont need to to know that the home is damp.
We can most definitely walk away, and have expressed strong concern, but wondering what input anyone working with the PB core melamine (this would be Tafisa) for years would be. For residential work we are typically prefinished maple interiors (columbia purebond) as we dont often do a lot of frameless on residential work.