MAXIMIZING CABINETRY END CAP STORAGE FOR THE AIRSTREAM INTERSTATE

Almost a year and no posts, because Blogger is all but a dead platform and I have too many other priorities to convert my content to a more secure space.

Anyway, this project was enough of a pain in the rear end that I figured some instructions were warranted for anyone who may wish to try something similar.

I started out with a pair of Zevro dry food dispensers in this space, which I installed several years ago, and which looked really cool.  But these things were a nightmare of under-engineering.  They may be fine for climate-controlled kitchens, but they don't work in an over-the-road scenario.

Exquisite design style, but useless, representing thirty bucks I will never see again.

The bottom caps would fall off with a clatter whenever we hit a good road bump, and then cereal would start dumping all over our galley kitchen.  Even in the best of times when we could wrap them with rubber bands to keep them together, the containers were not air tight, and the cereal would get soggy in high-humidity conditions.  So, as attractive as the Zevros obviously are, and as well-scaled for the space, they had to get gone.

I decided I wanted to retain the cabinetry end cap space as a cereal storage area, though, because it is so convenient.  On long road trips, my husband and I typically eat a large meal in the middle of the day, then drive until nightfall, park in a Cracker Barrel or Wallyworld, grab a quick bowl of cereal, and get to sleep as fast as possible.  It's just so easy to reach up there and grab cereal without having to rummage around under the galley in the dark.

My construction and installation sequence went like this.

(1) I ordered two of my favorite storage bottle - the Nalgene 48 ounce silo, directly from Nalgene.  I did not want any printing or graphics on the bottles - I just wanted a clean, unmarked style.

(2) Husband and I designed a holding platform to fit the cabinetry end cap.  The space is a difficult configuration, with a headknocker abutting it from the sliding door, the curved cabinetry and side of the van, etc. We settled on a simple design with the bracket in the center rather than on the edges as a typical suspended wall shelf might have, because of the geometry of the space. 

Ignore the red thing - that's our rear door prop, which received a second coat of red enamel at the same time.  The two pieces of the cereal shelf were painted to match the Interstate's countertop and other gray items.

(3) I made a stiff paper template in order to position the hole locations on the cabinetry.  The geometry of the work area meant that the holes had to be drilled from the front and screwed from the back.

Template on the wall-facing part of the shelf.  You can see how closely the paint color matches the countertop.

Template on the end cap.  I had obstructions behind that face on the top and bottom, so I had to choose my screw locations carefully.

(4) I then screwed the assembled shelf / bracket to the wall and set about figuring about how to make stretchy retaining loops for the two containers.  There could be no chance of them falling off the cabinet because this area sits right above our glass-topped sink.  One falling bottle would cost us a few hundred dollars for a new sink top.

(5) In order to make the hold straps, I used fabric elastic and double-cap rivets (here, and here) that my husband got us so that we could replace the stock straps on N95 masks with something more fitted and comfortable (with the coronavirus pandemic and material shortages, single-use N95s are being stretched out for use over several months apiece).  I would prefer to use shock cord in this application, but I could not find professional-looking and properly-sized end finishes on short notice.

The elastic strap was held in place by simple eye-screws that extend into the end cap.

In order to get the elastic band into the eye screws once they were screwed into the cabinet, it was necessary to Dremel out a narrow channel where the round terminus of the eye almost touches the shaft. 

For a smooth fit, the elastic was sewn together around the middle eye screw.  A single large loop would not have worked in this application because each Nalgene silo had to be held securely.

(5) Once the eye screws were installed and the elastic eased into them, the silos can be added.

Close-up of the rivet:

And with that little project completed, we'll continue to enjoy Blogger while we can.

From Techcrunch.

LITHIUM BATTERY CABINET MOD ON AN AIRSTREAM INTERSTATE

Inch by inch, life's a cinch.  Yard by yard, life is hard.

There are numerous versions of that quote floating around out there, and we may never know who coined the original phrase. Given that Ms. Giffords is married to an astronaut and lived a few miles from us, and given that my husband works as a Flight Controller for the International Space Station, I thought I'd use this one.  

"Inch by inch" is my best piece of advice where DIY is concerned, and I'm going to give an example of what I mean with this blog post.  It's fairly unlikely that there's another person out there who will need to do this exact mod to their Airstream Interstate, but that's not the point.  The point is to illustrate the general headspace associated with tackling modifications when you possess no formal skill in the area of issue, which is the case with me when it comes to woodworking and metalworking.  I hear from people who express reservations about their own ability to tackle DIY jobs and van modifications.  A lot of that can be overcome by simply taking things one small step at a time.

Let me start from the very beginning and proceed incrementally with successive photos to show you what I mean.

Originally, the space under our coach's closet contained this conventional electrical converter and a bunch of miscellaneous electrical and water lines kinda tossed back behind it.  You can see that there's a mounting panel cut out of cabinetry material, to which this converter was attached.  

This is what that mounting panel looked like when removed from the Interstate.  It's a piece of OEM cabinetry material, but it was cut very crudely by Airstream.  You can see that the cut lines are jagged and the right side leg is a conspicuously different width than the left side leg.  Despite these limitations, I had to find a way to re-adapt this piece during our lithium battery upgrade project (blog posts on the technical aspects of that project itself are still to be published).  I had to re-use this piece because we did not have access to any more of this cabinetry material. 

This is what the lithium install looked like with the closet door removed, closet floor removed, and that front mounting panel also removed.  You can see the shallow tray on top of the batteries, a frame painted white, but the new electrical inverter had not been installed in that spot when this photo was taken.  Nevertheless, you get the general idea of this lay-out.  

This was my temporary protective cover for that under-closet lithium chamber - it's simply a piece of black coroplast (plastic cardboard) with some mosquito screen covering two ventilation cut-outs, with the mosquito screen being held on the back side using duct tape.  The coroplast piece was then screwed into the mounting frame using the same screws and holes that had held the original electrical converter. But that wouldn't do as a long term solution.  It was strictly a stop-gap measure. 

I knew that the final modified panel had to include a kick plate on the bottom.  In the tiny space of the Interstate, stuff gets bumped, kicked, and generally smacked around - it happens.  I didn't want anything to accidentally punch itself through that opening and impact the lithium batteries or other electric components.  We have a miter saw and I've gotten reasonably good at making precise wood cuts using it.  So I cut a strip of half-inch furniture-grade plywood to be added across the bottom.  The plywood was left over from my custom closet shelf project.  

You might observe that it's a very thin kick plate that I added above - possibly not very strong.  But knowing that the original converter opening had been crudely cut by Airstream, I knew I'd have to make an overlay for the ventilation opening.  There was no way to re-cut that panel to make it visually presentable, especially given that one leg was wider than the other.  So I began to measure for a quarter-inch furniture-grade plywood overlay to hold the ventilation screen.  Together with the half-inch strip at the bottom, it would be strong enough when all attached together.  

At that point I needed to size the opening.  I wanted as large an opening as possible for maximum ventilation, but I had to account for the irregularity of the underlying cabinetry mounting piece.  I settled on this size as represented by the blue construction paper, and my husband and I worked together to cut the opening.  Basically, he used a jig saw freehand, with me standing on the workbench, standing on top of this piece of plywood to hold it steady as he cut (we don't own a lot of sophisticated woodworking tools).  

OK, so now I'm one more inch further along in this process, with the overlay cut.  Next I painted it and the underlying strip using a Sherwin Williams oil-based enamel color formulation that matched our Interstate's counter tops.  

Once the paint had dried, I needed to determine how large to order the perforated aluminum sheet, which was by far the most expensive part of this process (about $37 with tax, shipping, and handling).  For that reason, I wanted it to be as large as the opening would tolerate, knowing that we might do further mods down the road and maybe I'd want to re-purpose that piece on a different future cabinetry mod.  So here you see the overlay opening in blue, and the aluminum plate sizing in pink.  Given that we are not professionals, we always create project mock-ups out of cardboard and/or construction paper.  It's a practice that tends to eliminate both accidents and unforeseeable sizing mistakes, no matter what we are working on.  

I ordered the piece from Online Metals, which also supplied the same perforated aluminum sheet for my custom computer table and my under-cabinet shelving projects.  They have given me really good service.   

After the aluminum piece arrived, the next task was to attach it to the gray painted overlay.  This was more challenging than you might first assume, because I was using the existing perforations rather than drilling holes electively in locations of my choice.  As such, I had to drill the small bolt holes partially blindly from the back side.  You can see that I'm a couple of millimeters off being completely centered with those bolts.  As my husband would say, "If you could achieve better than that on a first try, then you wouldn't be called a DIYer.  You'd be called a professional instead and you'd be getting paid accordingly."  

I had originally planned to add a second quad of small bolts to hold the overlay to the original cabinetry mounting piece.  But once I realized that my first four bolts were slightly off center, I didn't want to add any more because it would visually amplify the imperfection.  For that reason, I decided to attach the overlay to the original cabinetry piece using 3M exterior grade double-sided tape, one of the few applications in which I would agree to use that product (adhesive products generally don't stand up well here in the Deep South).

However - next inch please - using the 3M tape caused a domino effect in that the overlay was now standing a bit proud of the cabinetry mounting piece.  Which means that my strapping for the bottom reinforcement strip was no longer flush.  So I added a spacer washer on either side in order to close the gap between the kick plate strip and the small mending plates I was using to attach it to the cabinetry mounting piece, as you can see above.  

In order to create a good seal along the bottom of this workpiece, I had to add something flexible and compressible to exclude dirt or spilled materials from potentially penetrating the bottom edge and entering the lithium chamber.  This is what I chose.  

And here you see it applied to the bottom edge. 

My husband wants to be able to pull off key cabinetry pieces quickly without having to mess with screw drivers and hardware.  For that reason, we've used neodymium magnets to attach certain structural pieces, rather than fixed screws.  Several of them were attached to the back of this workpiece to hold it in place against the cabinetry frame below the closet.  

This and the jig-saw cut to the overlay were the only parts of this project that my husband assisted with - I could have done the entire job without him, but two heads are better than one, and he decided that he wanted to counter-sink screws into the steel washers that would go on cabinetry frame, to which the neodymium magnets would attach.

"You don't have to make every last thing fancy," I noted to him as he was purchasing the counter-sink drill bit needed to do this.

"What's the point of doing any project if you're not learning at least one new thing in the process?" he asked.

I replied (paraphrased), "I've got four additional projects stacked up on the heels of this one.  I'd never get them all done if I don't simplify and choose a path of least resistance at times." 

Here's the counter-sunk screw sitting in its metal washer, stuck to the neodymium magnet in the workpiece.  

And this is what it looks like from above, peering down into the small gap created as the new front panel stands a bit proud of the existing cabinetry frame.  That small gap allows one's fingers to pry the piece off the cabinetry - in other words, we designed it this way intentionally.  Those neodymium magnets are very strong, and leverage is required to dislodge them.

The mat you see lining the closet floor is an IKEA Oplev which I cut to the shape of the closet.  Its purpose is to trap grit and dirt that falls off my folding bicycle which I store here.  I don't want that dirt making its way down into the lithium chamber.  

And after proceeding through this little project all those incremental inches one at a time, here's the final result.

I think it looks pretty good.  It does a good job of resurrecting a badly-cut cabinetry piece while meeting the ventilation and chamber protection goals.  

This project represents one more small step in the life of a couple of van DIYers.  

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.