Camper Modifications: A Kitchen Cabinet

Our FWC is a shell model, which affords us the space to customize the camper to fit our needs - something extremely necessary in such small quarters. When we bought the camper, the previous owners had installed brackets and a wood countertop in the passenger-side corner, underneath the bed, where they kept a single-burner propane stove and a cutting board:

We wanted to use more of that space and put in an entire cabinet to keep all of our kitchen supplies, but we didn't want to block any of the under-bench storage. So the three of us hit a few stores for inspiration and found success at IKEA.

Thanks IKEA for being cool about the dog in tow!

Though IKEA was definitely not Lu's idea of a good time

After crawling into the camper in the parking lot to re-measure the space at least twice and thoughtfully poking the store models on at least three separate occasions, we bought this Valje cabinet. The construction was solid (solid particleboard, yes, but solid enough!) and had a spring-loaded locking door, good for staying closed while in transit. Part one, done.

The next endeavor was figuring out how to raise the cabinet from the bench so the under-bench storage would not be blocked. Given that mounting the cabinet to the bench itself would provide the greatest amount of support, we got maple wood blocks and a small army of brackets at Home Depot to build a platform for the cabinet that was directly installed to the bench.

Phase 1 of install:

        

Nothing is attached to the back wall of the camper as Clay wasn't sure of its integrity.

And then we (and by we, I mean Clay) just mounted the cabinet to the platform. Voila!

     

Can never have too much storage (Clay says yes you can have too much storage, but agreed we do need some)... We love it!

JULY UPDATE: After loading our kitchen cabinet to the gills and taking the camper on another trip, we quickly realized the weight of many items in the cabinet was too much for the spring-load door lock. Que bottles of spices and olive oil rolling around the camper floor for the entire drive. Quick trip to Home Depot and some careful drilling later, a latch is now installed :)