EVEN MORE SHOE STORAGE FOR THE AIRSTREAM INTERSTATE

On a recent trip, my husband and I each needed five pairs of shoes.  Dress shoes, manual labor shoes, shower shoes (flip-flops), hiking boots, and casual every day shoes. 

That means storage for ten pairs, or twenty shoes.  In a van.

Back in 2015, I described assigned storage for four pairs of those shoes (here).  That became my most heavily-viewed blog post of this entire 4-year series. 

Four pairs down, six pairs to go!!

This became my next shoe conversion target - the recessed space in front of the hot water heater cover.  I first converted the panel itself to a neodymium magnetic attachment system (Airstream had screwed it into place, which made winterizing a real pain).

Obviously, anything else I built into this little space had to be just as easily removable.  Furthermore, I had a rule for this project:  no purchasing of materials.  We have SO MUCH MATERIAL that we have already accumulated during the course of doing four years of van projects.  We need to find creative ways to use up that stuff.  Everything I built here, I had to source from our garage.  There are many different ways to complete a project like this.  Mine involved the use of scraps and residual hardware.

In order to maximize that void space, I needed a shelf.  But in front of that pull-off panel, there's a cabinetry cross-piece, so I couldn't build a simple 3-sided shelf.  I had to make the "legs" less wide.

Like this.  This is a piece of scrap plywood left over from our dog's front seat platform project.  

Here you can see what I mean:

See the cross-piece in front?

Now, obviously I could not attach that shelf insert to the cabinetry, because I'd be right back where I started in terms of inconvenience in reaching the hot water heater valves.  But there was also the issue of shoes tumbling out of this shallow space when the van is in motion.  I know this happens, because we use that space for shoes now, and I'm constantly tripping over them when they fall into the aisle. 

In order to contain both the shoes and the unattached platform that would segregate the pairs of them, I went with a variant on the bungee cord theme.

See those two little neodymiums screwed into the lower cross-piece?  Those are key to this simple design.

Also, because I had to trim one of my Flor tiles in front of the door, I friction-fit a remnant from that piece into this slot, to give it a more finished look.  That, too, can simply be lifted out - it's not attached. 

I cut pieces of a bungee cord to length so that they would stretch between the top and bottom surfaces.  I used four small angle brackets for this attachment job, but rather than permanently attaching them at the bottom, I used more neodymium magnets, so that the cords would be removable.  They hold like this:

Next it was just a matter of sanding, painting, and assembling the shelf for final use.  Because we are in the month of December and it's too cold for paint to set up properly, I sprayed and then baked the pieces in my kitchen oven so that they'd dry quickly.  I may go back later, when the weather is warmer, and repaint them in the Sherwin Williams color-matched gray shade that I've used elsewhere in the van.

First coat sinks in well.  I typically use my kitchen oven about six times a year - once to bake a Thanksgiving turkey, and five times to bake Interstate parts.  It's not a bad practice if you don't mind your house smelling like xylene. 

And of course, the money shot:

Hopefully I will never again find my husband's malodorous Topsiders in the driver's seat.  That's where he has been storing them at night, because he had nowhere else to put them.

I don't know that this is my favorite design that I could have come up with, but it's a danged sight better than what was there to start with (which was nothing).  On with the road testing.