Road....worthy

Finishing up the cabinets!

Building cabinets from scratch is hard but rewarding.  I was gifted the quartersawn oak face frame material by my friend Adam - who passed away recently.  So these cabinets are going to be all the more special....(& I'm trying really hard not to screw them up)

 List of stuff I did for the first time on this cabinet project:  built cabinets of any kind, used pocket screws (kreg jig), used shellac, used a biscuit jointer, used vinegar & steel finish, assembled cabinet drawers, installed recessed hinges, etc, etc.

I ordered the drawer boxes from Barker (link: http://www.barkerdoor.com/Baltic-Plywood-Dovetail-Drawer-Boxes-p/drawerbox-baltic-dovetail.htm )  These were perfect and you can order them in 1/16" increments.   I ordered them unassembled and unfinished.  They went right together with a rubber mallet and bit of glue.  The boxes do need some sanding and then I finished mine with "emmet's good stuff" which was leftover from finishing the raw edges on my butcherblock counter.  Lots of other products would work just as well.

 In case you're wondering about my "shop" - for most of the work, it has been this bench I built in my garage out of 2x4s and plywood.

 You can see that the floor is now in.  It's a sheet marmoleum product.  Abbey flooring in Missoula installed a 3/8" subfloor and the marmoleum for less than $800 total.  Then, I wrapped the curved booth with 1/4" wacky wood from intermountain wood products.  I'll come back later and finish the face with a quartersawn oak veneer to match the cabinets.

Here you can see the hard rock maple butcher block, 2 burner stove, stainless sink, faucet, faceframe,  and drawer boxes installed.

(Another view)

Looking towards the rear.  You can also see the electrical system tie-in work starting to happen.

I chose to go with recessed, soft close hinges.  Honestly might not be the best choice in the long run.  The hinge mount is super solid in the door but there is only one screw holding each hinge to the face frame and even those are slotted mounts that can move.  After having mounted them, I expect them to fail at some point and am already thinking about what I'll do when they do fail (no good ideas yet)

Here I am mounting the drawer faces to the boxes.  If it isn't clear from my blog, I highly recommend this order of process; 1) Mill all of the face frame material to the exact same thickness 2) The doors and drawer material needs to be all the same thickness too.  I did everything at once and made it all 3/4" thick.  3) build the face frame with a kreg jig and pocket screws with glue  4) build the doors and drawer faces  5) Install a cabinet floor  6) build the cabinet ends and dividers - I mounted a sheet of 1/2" plywood to the aluminum wall so that I could put screws anywhere and not worry about hitting wires, plus it gave me a nice and square top lip for the counter that I squared the end panels and dividers to.  6) Mount the face frame and square everything up.  7) Cut the countertop to length and install.  8) Once mounted, cut the holes in the countertop for sink, stove, etc.  9) Mount the hinges to the face frame and either run a piece of material (wood) to the back so that the hinge is supported  or use a hanging bracket that is normally optional with the hinges.  10) Assemble and install drawer boxes flush with the face frame.  11) install drawer faces, recessed hinges and doors  12) I haven't done it yet but looking forward to installing knobs/pulls/handles next.

 Here you can see the first two drawer faces and the first door going in.  so far, so good...














Here's the final product!!!  (I'm really happy with how this has turned out so far.  Still needs pulls and the new (atwood xt) furnace isn't working, so I'm waiting to install one that does before finishing the under sink cab)

Insulating the floor and belly pan install

It's been tricky to attach the shell over the bellypan but I got it all figured out and sent rivets through the top shell, belly pan, 'C' channel, and belly pan.  The belly pan aluminum is crimped over the channel, so the rivets go through it twice.  

  Here's where old meets new.  I used the old pan in the corners - because I didn't think I could figure out how to shape the aluminum and they are still in fair condition.

New pan on the street side.  Looks great.













This is "foam it green" brand sprayfoam.  It's the 202 kit of structural, closed cell product.  I put it on thick, so it only covered about 80 sqft.  Price with shipping was about $250, so that's more than $3/sqft.  Not as expensive as some options but certainly more than others.  Overall, I'd say that I'm moderately pleased.  It is fairly rigid and has decent adhesion but wasn't very difficult to remove in areas of overspray.






One of the biggest complaints I've heard is that the product makes a mess.  So here's a picture of the mess.  Not too bad in my opinion.

Buttoning up the belly pan over the sprayfoam insulation.  I had to carve off a few bits.  For carving, I used a dewalt saws-all blade as a knife & it worked great.

Reattaching the shell

 Finally have the shell back on the chassis.

In this picture, you can see that I've removed the sawhorses and have begun lowering the shell back onto the chassis/floor.

As with lifting it, I use a bottle jack to support half the shell, put some short legs on the wood frame and lower it down to the new level.

The 'C' channel and brackets attaching it to the studs were in bad shape.  In this picture, I'm fabricating new L brackets to make the attachment. Easier to drill holes in the large material before I cut it.  

  Cutting the new brackets.

Piling up the new brackets.

Reattachment is tricky.  This Streamline trailer had belly pan wrapped and crimped on the 'C' channel.  I'm faced with the challenge of trying to figure out how to make sure my wood floor has the right radius corners (old ones were so rotten I had to guess), attach bellypan, attach shell, attach floor, and sprayfoam the underfloor.  In this picture, you can see that I've crimped one section of bellypan so that I can lower the shell over it.

 Removed most of the external wood framing.  These back two legs are allowing me to use floor jacks to adjust the shell for final touchdown.

 Instead of rebuilding the curved corners, I'll keep them and wrap as much new material over them as I can.

 This extra sheet of new is to guide the lip of the shell over the new bellypan lip.

 All of the external wood is gone and starting to lower the back.

 Installed the rear 'C' channel and lowered the shell.

 All of the interior wood framing is gone and starting to make solid attachments all around.

Finished Wastewater System

Wastewater system is done!!!  Both holding tanks are in and glued.

I had to alter the frame but was able to put two holding tanks between the floor and belly pan.  These tanks are from Inca Plastics and are 23 gallons each.  Tanks were just a bit warped and didn't fit within the dimensions on the blueprint, so I had to cut some of the iron and re attach.

 Here you can see the cable valterra valves.  I welded a piece of angle iron to mount the handles and will figure out how to make that look pretty later.

Things are starting to look good!  The new wheel wells are beautiful.  Lafe Shoopman of L&C Custom did a great job on the wheel wells and only charged me $300 for both.  I lifted the trailer 3.25" with the new InlandRV (dexter) torsion axles and so I took three inches out of the wheel wells.  This should give me precious extra cabinet space.  My only complaint is that InlandRV did not respond to three requests asking them how much travel I should allow for with the new axle setup.  Annoying.  I couldn't wait forever so I just cut off what I added in height.  If that doesn't work, I'm going to be super pissed at InlandRV.

Put the trailer back under the shell!  Oh hells yeah.  Feels great, can't imagine how good it'll be to get it reconnected - much less useable!

So far, it's looking pretty good.  The rear end was completely rotten, so I didn't have much in the way of templates.  My plan is to lower the shell down onto the chassis and make the final adjustments to the wood and attach the bellypan, etc all at once.  I think I'll be able to do any needed modifications but we'll see:)  I also plan to use structural sprayfoam under the wood floor as I put the belly pan on.  Lots of stuff in the airforums about how sprayfoam falls apart but I can't find a credible account of closed cell foam failing - so I'll give it a try.  Properties are too good to pass up.  Fiberglass batt is popular but it's also the reason I had to do a frame off in the first place!