Step one. Bought the van.
Hello Everybody, First post. I camp a lot in tents but after spending three days straight in a tent in the rain at Dolly Sods I swore I'd make a change. Here it is. Bought it Wednesday. Dro...
Forum Discussion
Kitchen Cabinet, Post 1
This is one of those project where I'm starting to write about it before it's finished. Hopefully I can keep the build ahead of the documentation. I'm calling this project simply the Kitchen Cabinet but there's more to it than that. Having an electric pump based running water system was always in my mind for inclusion in the van. Came up with a myriad of possible designs but settled on a mostly self-contained system where I'd fit as much as I could into a single cabinet.
First off have to figure out the size of the cabinet. Start with the fresh water supply. I'll be using two 5 gallon plastic jerry cans. You can see one of them in this picture. These are the same ones used by the US Military. They even have "Property of US Government" molded into the side. Bought the cans from LCI.(link). They are currently around $25 each.
If you look to the left in the above photo you can see a 2-1/2 gallon red plastic fuel can. I've been car camping for years and the red can has been my main water carrier. One of the first things I do after getting back from a camping trip is to take the water can and dump whatever is left in it into the washing machine then dry out the can. It's a good system so I'm using it with the van but upping the size. I bought three of the 5 gallon cans but two should be more than enough for the majority of my weekend getaways.
I want to position the cabinet opposite the sofa-bed, with one end by the rear wheel well and the other end where the two side doors meet. So I was planning on building a mock-up when serendipity hit. My furnace had been getting up in years and I decided to have it replaced before winter hit. Of course we didn't have a winter this year but that's another story. So the local HVAC guys were replacing the furnace when I spotted the box the new one was shipped it.
Say "Hello" to my kitchen cabinet mock-up.
After inspection Tiger agrees that it's the right size for the water cans.
Check walkthrough space with sofa-bed in sofa positions.
Doesn't contact the cabinet in bed position.
Next check the counter top space. How will my "sink" fit.
As you can see I didn't buy a real sink. I'll be using a 8-quart stainless steel bowl I bought at Wally-World (Wal-Mart) for around $10. The bowl will be drilled out for a drain.
Draw a circle on the box to represent the sink and check that with the fit of my induction cooking unit.
I'm going to need some more counter space. Think I'll incorporate a drop leaf. Looking through my box of yet-to-be-recycled cardboard I found a near perfect size for a drop leaf. A Ledo's large size pizza box.
Take a bunch of measurements.
Here I'm measuring Tiger's attention span.
continued -
This is one of those project where I'm starting to write about it before it's finished. Hopefully I can keep the build ahead of the documentation. I'm calling this project simply the Kitchen Cabinet but there's more to it than that. Having an electric pump based running water system was always in my mind for inclusion in the van. Came up with a myriad of possible designs but settled on a mostly self-contained system where I'd fit as much as I could into a single cabinet.
First off have to figure out the size of the cabinet. Start with the fresh water supply. I'll be using two 5 gallon plastic jerry cans. You can see one of them in this picture. These are the same ones used by the US Military. They even have "Property of US Government" molded into the side. Bought the cans from LCI.(link). They are currently around $25 each.
If you look to the left in the above photo you can see a 2-1/2 gallon red plastic fuel can. I've been car camping for years and the red can has been my main water carrier. One of the first things I do after getting back from a camping trip is to take the water can and dump whatever is left in it into the washing machine then dry out the can. It's a good system so I'm using it with the van but upping the size. I bought three of the 5 gallon cans but two should be more than enough for the majority of my weekend getaways.
I want to position the cabinet opposite the sofa-bed, with one end by the rear wheel well and the other end where the two side doors meet. So I was planning on building a mock-up when serendipity hit. My furnace had been getting up in years and I decided to have it replaced before winter hit. Of course we didn't have a winter this year but that's another story. So the local HVAC guys were replacing the furnace when I spotted the box the new one was shipped it.
Say "Hello" to my kitchen cabinet mock-up.
After inspection Tiger agrees that it's the right size for the water cans.
Check walkthrough space with sofa-bed in sofa positions.
Doesn't contact the cabinet in bed position.
Next check the counter top space. How will my "sink" fit.
As you can see I didn't buy a real sink. I'll be using a 8-quart stainless steel bowl I bought at Wally-World (Wal-Mart) for around $10. The bowl will be drilled out for a drain.
Draw a circle on the box to represent the sink and check that with the fit of my induction cooking unit.
I'm going to need some more counter space. Think I'll incorporate a drop leaf. Looking through my box of yet-to-be-recycled cardboard I found a near perfect size for a drop leaf. A Ledo's large size pizza box.
Take a bunch of measurements.
Here I'm measuring Tiger's attention span.
continued -
