EXPANDING THE OVERHEAD CABINET ON AN AIRSTREAM INTERSTATE

Our 2007 Airstream Interstate came with rather inefficient overhead cabinets, indeed.

Here is our port-side rear upper cabinet dismounted from the vehicle, looking end-on, with the pop-up hinged door removed (you can see the hinge extended near photo upper left).  This is the proverbial "triangular" cabinet for which Airstream is well-known.  That wood-toned curve you see to the right represents a rough trace of the Mercedes Sprinter interior roof shoulder, which this cabinet abuts.  The white end cap represents the trace of the OEM finished cabinet interior.  Imagine if overhead compartments on commercial airlines were made this inefficiently.  Nobody would be able to get anything larger than a woman's purse inside of them.  

We didn't set out to do this as a standalone project, but we had to remove the cabinet to re-do wiring for our lithium battery retrofit.  And given that we had it removed, we decided to proceed with a modification while the opportunity presented itself.

I initially tried to hire a professional to do this job for us, but trying to hire skilled trades is an act of futility these days because they simply don't exist.  ^^ My statement comes on the heels of This Old House's announcement that it is teaming with Mike Rowe to promote the development of the next generation of skilled American tradespeople to help bridge the shortfall which currently stands at about 6 million workers.  Talk about a match made in heaven.

Screengrab of Mike Rowe's website as of January 2017 - good things are in store.  

So, with no tradespeople available for a job like this, we jumped into yet another project as DIYers who are inexperienced in this area.  This is what we came up with in terms of a solution.

Basically we had to take that straight-backed triangular cabinet and bump out the back, being careful not to impinge upon the Sprinter shoulder or ribs in the process.  Here you see a piece of cardboard cut into a triangle and overlaying the wasted space.  You can see how we could have situated the point of that triangle a little higher, for a slightly different shape of the resulting reclaimed space.  

This process is subjective, which is why I'm not giving precise measurements here.  You can trial-and-error the shape of your cardboard bump-out template until you are satisfied with the results.  Depending on how you want to use your cabinet, you could even add two points instead of one, to create a new polygonal spine if you prefer (we saw that option as exceeding the point of diminishing returns).  Then all your subsequent measurements derive from that initial decision as to what your spine extension shape should be.

Here are the two wood products we used, which are available at Lowes hardware.  One is a half-inch furniture-grade plywood to extend the existing interior support spines.  The other is a quarter-ish-inch oak plywood, of which we needed two pieces. 

We used the cardboard template to trace the shape of the spine extensions onto the thicker plywood (same thickness as the existing spines), which we cut using our miter saw.  Then we used simple metal brackets to attach these cut extensions.  All of these supplies are available at any big box hardware store.

Existing cabinet rear spine with the new extension in place.  All it takes is a miter saw to do this.  We don't even have a table for ours.  It sits on our garage floor. 

Once we had the spine extensions attached, we then measured for the thin plywood pieces that would face the back of this cabinet.  Again, this is a measure-as-you-go project.  In our case, we don't yet own a table saw, and so we cut the rear pieces using a circular saw, a pair of saw horses, a helper (me) to stabilize the wood as it was being cut, and a lot of care.

First piece in place.

Yeah, bare feet in the DIYer workshop.  Not necessarily top-of-the-line safety, but it's hot in Houston, even in December.  

Attachment is easily done using a brad nail gun.  See how the two slabs of thin oak plywood butt together at the existing spine, each nailed into it.  

Now a few words about securing those backing pieces to the newly-extended spines.  Remember two things:

1. This is the inside of a closed cabinet - it doesn't need to be picture-perfect because no one will see it.  There are more sophisticated ways to modify cabinetry, but it becomes a question of where do you want to invest your DIY effort?  I'm a big "80/20 Rule" proponent and this project is a fine example of that.
2. This is the inside of a closed cabinet in a camper van that shakes severely on rough roads.  There's no sense making sophisticated joinery or finishes on the inside of a cabinet that's going to get the crap beat out of it in travel.  You'll notice in these photos that Airstream did not finish its own interior seams - it just butted the pieces up against each other and left small gaps.  This is why - because of the inevitable road vibrations.  It's not worth it to try to caulk and finish perfectly. 

With those things in mind...

Here's how we secured the "point" of the new expanded back wall - we used a series of these brackets which we bent to the correct angle.  That residue you see is Lock-Tite thread locker applied to the screws to account for the aforesaid shaking.  Prior to painting, I used isopropyl alcohol to wipe some of the excess off the wood.  

Here's how we pinned the bottom edge.  It was a simple straight bracket bent to the correct angle.  Remember, the original backing was flat and designed to be flush with this existing structural member.  But the addition is not in the same plane, so this is our workaround for that.  

The resulting configuration proved to be very sturdy - arguably, it is now built better than the original cabinet, which had only a thin melamine-coated backing.

There she is... Miss America (without her make-up, which is described below).  This is a view of the back of the cabinet showing the bracket configuration.  The cabinet is sitting on its underside, but remember, two LED swivel light fixtures hang down underneath it.  Therefore in order to set it on this side, I had to use two small polyethylene storage containers in the manner shown, so that I wouldn't accidentally crush the light fixtures.  The light fixtures are hanging in the containers, essentially. This was easier than dismounting the fixtures.  

Then it was on to the task of matching the melamine with paint (aka "the make-up").

Sherwin Williams did that for me by lifting the color formula off an existing cabinetry piece. The match was impressively close. 

If you're not a sophisticated painter, no matter - this is easily done.  Just remember to have patience and apply multiple thin coats.

Raw wood is going to suck up paint irregularly, and the first coat applied will look dreadful.  It may be worth sanding down with a fine paper between coats.   

And if you do that, make sure you tack off the dust.  This is a commercial tack cloth. 

Here's what the cabinet looked like after its second coat; I ultimately added three coats.  (I brushed the first coat for maximum penetration, but rolled the second and third coats.)

Looks seamless, doesn't it?  Unless someone were examining closely, they'd probably assume the whole thing was original.

There's our miter saw sitting on the floor at photo left, in the background.  This project doesn't require a lot of sophisticated equipment. 

Close-up.  I left the new brackets unpainted because I thought they looked cool.  Industrial chic.   

By the way, I also used the paint to seal as many raw plywood cabinet edges as I could during this process.  Airstream had left them uncoated, which is fine in a perfect world, but if there is ever a water leak that comes in contact with an uncoated plywood seam, the plywood is going to swell up and the cabinet would be ruined.  So I sealed as many cuts as I could access, just in case.

Like this.  

And now we need to see a pic of the finished cabinet re-installed!  The money shot!

Seven, seven, and seven - that's what now fits in the plastic container in the middle of this forward cabinet.  Seven socks (including very thick Smartwool), seven shorts, and seven shirts.  The idea being that there'd still be room for a stack of pants and a stack of outer shirts on either side of this container.   

Yeah, well, there you have it - I put a pic of my husband's underwear on the internet, but it's not any different from what you'd see in a Duluth Trading catalog, because that's exactly what it is.

There are various types of containers that can be placed in this cabinet now, but ever since I first chopped down a polyethylene container to make this shoe storage solution, I've been partial to adapting them to customized uses.  This is an ordinary Sterlite brand storage bin, probably from Walmart.  My husband used a Dremel tool to cut off the top portion with the flared cover-receiving lip, and we filed down the cut to make a smooth upper edge.  I like the translucent containers because you can see at a glance how many clean pieces are remaining.  This is important because nobody gets more than seven changes of socks and underwear when living in a Class B, so it's good to be visually reminded of laundry status.

Here's the other added bonus to this project:

This used to be where Airstream had installed the old DVD player and piled up a bunch of wires, but it will become the new electronics bin for our lithium battery system (the batteries themselves will be at the bottom of the closet, the outer wall of which is visible to photo right).  And this space is much easier to configure and work with now that it is expanded.  

A very satisfying and fairly easy project.  I know that the day is going to come when we decide to pull the cabinets off the other side of the van and improve them as well, but that's a lower priority until we get the lithium system finished and the roof seams repaired and the roof re-coated (more on that stuff to follow).

Not any longer.