Whats with these CHEAP cabinet doors???

Cheap quality cabinet doors. Grrrrr :M

I go over to my wardrobe cabinet to get a clean work shirt, and do the usual standard practice - grab it by the handle and draw it towards me.

So I pull on this thing and the door opened all right, opened and fell to pieces on my floor. About a 4' high X 20" wide raised oak panel door. Kindling right before my eyes!!

Thump bang! There I was with the handle in my hand and the rest of the door on the floor, in pieces. It just fell apart!!! The stile with the hinges remained attached to the cabinet.

What the heck?:h:h

I examine the wreckage and there is ZERO evidence of any mechanical fasteners of any kind. Couldn't see any glue either.

Is this common for Triple E? Do they make all their doors to disintegrate after a few years use?

When I bought this thing there was a lower cabinet door missing. Maybe that's why. After coming apart for the 43rd time they used it to start a fire!!

Never had this issue with any other RV I have owned. I had one come apart on my old Sportsmen once, but that was only because some doorknob left it open (guess who?) and I stood up and clocked myself in the noodle with it. I instantly wailed it shut with a backhand whack with a closed fist. No wonder it broke! Darn doors that jump out and bite me anyways!

Anyhow, back to this Triple E junk.

This isn't the first door that has fallen apart. Since last May when I bought this rig, I have had to repair 3 smaller doors already for the same fate. Open them up and they fall to pieces. Or is it 4?

And I see a couple more that have gaps at the joints where they are ready to fly to pieces the next time a sparrow farts next door.

It's a good thing I have spent my life fixing stuff or else I'd be up the creek!

A stock staple item in this TT is a bottle of wood glue!!!

So I dug out my rubber mallet and grabbed the glue and I'm about to put this wonderful engineered marvel back to its original shape.

So I can get it off the floor where it blocks the entrance to my potty.

But I'm not afraid to put some glue on it, unlike the twits at Triple E that built this chariot! I could get out my 18ga brad nailer and some short pins, but that would involve opening the door and leaving my nice toasty roost in here and getting my frozen compressor and frozen brad nailer and frozen air line in frozen lala land here.

Glue. Lots of it. Yeah baby, glue - woodglue! Hey that would make a great forum name!

There! Did it! Rant complete!! Now I'm gonna crack a cold one and get to work! :B

25 Replies

joshuajim
Explorer II
Feb 13, 2014
On most quality cabinet doors, the panel is not glued and allowed to float. This is because the rail and stile expand at a different rate than the panel. However, gluing the panel is a cheap assembly method that will generally last a year or 2 before the stiles pull apart!
westend
Explorer
Feb 13, 2014
dougrainer wrote:
westend wrote:
Bad glue and not enough on it to hold the joint. It may be that you're getting quite a bit of expansion from the panel against the rails and stiles, too. Apply Titebond III and clamp, done in an hour.

I think these trailer builders probably order thousands of doors for cabinets and try to find the lowest bidder. It wouldn't surprise me if that supplier is somewhere off-shore, like in Asia.

WRONG. Except for a very small few, ALL Cabinets and Doors are built at the factory in their own woodshops. Doug
Thanks Doug, I learn every day.
Camper_Ken
Explorer
Feb 13, 2014
mena661 wrote:
Newmar makes all their own cabinets and the quality is very good, even on my gas coach.

I worked as a delivery tech for a few years and saw every brand of coach, new and used. Newmar has some of the best cabinetry even in their entry level has coaches. That's one of the reasons I bought a Newmar.
down_home
Explorer II
Feb 11, 2014
Cost saving. We've looked at many of the mid priced units 300,000 or so and even the 500,000 units. They now use the cheap Chinese copies of Euro tech hinges. The joinery is rough, and much of it is vinyl clad or wrapped paperboard. The frames are cheap wood and sometimes the face frames are wood but wrapped in the same vinyl printed wood. Even some of the higher priced units we looked at had sorry construction, in the cabinetry. It seems they have adapted the idea of selling features no matter how cheap they are.
About five years ago we looked at a bus. The cabinetry and carpet and so forth was disappointing too.
Our now little bit older until has real wood, and also some hardboard with a printed or painted surface, on the sides and bottoms. The staples worked loose on one cabinet just from normal use. I took it apart and glued and used small brass screws. I had the get up and go I would rebuild them.
crabbin_cabin
Explorer II
Feb 11, 2014
The price you paid includes those doors!!
mena661
Explorer
Feb 11, 2014
DutchmenSport wrote:
So why should it surprise anyone that RV cabinets are made with particle board and held together with nothing but air? Have you attempted to purchase furniture lately... from just about anywhere?
Maybe it's more difficult to find where you live but just about every furniture store where I live has furniture with real wood. Sure there's the cheap stuff. You just have to pick the furniture set with the real wood.
MEXICOWANDERER
Explorer
Feb 11, 2014
When I made my bus and Warren did the cabinets in the MCI we used 20 gauge aluminum sheet on the inside of the doors. Pretty light stuff but when laminated with wood, holymole, strong. Took me awhile to do but being the Crown was going to Central America I used nutserts in the cabinets with stainless screws.

When I did those burnout totals for Good Sam you would not believe what we found behind panel sheets. The really crappy stuff got reassembled with Franklin Tite-Bond sub floor glue. I've looked for it and cannot find it now in the USA. Unbelievable strength.
Bob_Landry
Explorer
Feb 11, 2014
dougrainer wrote:
westend wrote:
Bad glue and not enough on it to hold the joint. It may be that you're getting quite a bit of expansion from the panel against the rails and stiles, too. Apply Titebond III and clamp, done in an hour.

I think these trailer builders probably order thousands of doors for cabinets and try to find the lowest bidder. It wouldn't surprise me if that supplier is somewhere off-shore, like in Asia.

WRONG. Except for a very small few, ALL Cabinets and Doors are built at the factory in their own woodshops. Doug

I have to agree with Doug. The cabinet doors in my Keystone appear to be well made with clean miters, and cross pieces assembled with mortise and tenon joints, but when you look closely at the construction, you can see the fine wire staples used to hold it together.
I've given up complaining about quality. I accept that these are built for minimal expense to the company using minimal skilled workers and I just continue to fix the problems with the satisfaction that my repair is better than the factory's product or the dealer's repair.
DutchmenSport
Explorer
Feb 11, 2014
So why should it surprise anyone that RV cabinets are made with particle board and held together with nothing but air? Have you attempted to purchase furniture lately... from just about anywhere? It's all particle board held together with air! If you want real wood furniture, you're going to pay an outlandish price for it (if you can find anywhere that still makes furniture with real wood!).

I built my own cabinets (in the house) when I remodeled (which I'm always doing it seems). I built my own bed, end tables, coffee table, night stands, clothing hamper, you name it to ensure it's real wood, held together with wood screws and GLUE. When selecting a camper, the cabinets are particle board too. First item on the list with the new camper was go inspect each cabinet and drawer and glue and reinforce them.

What's worse, they use just cover the particle board with wall paper that looks like wood. Scratch that stuff and it's ruined forever. You can't even fix it with new stain or Old English.
dougrainer
Nomad
Feb 11, 2014
OldRadios wrote:
We looked this winter at quite a few different new C's and most of them under $65,000 had cabinets that were poor fit, stapled together, or were glued press board.

HOW do you think they get to THAT price target????? Unlike a regular house, ALL cabinets and such in an RV MUST be as light as possible. That is why they use lighter(cheaper woods or wood type material) in the build of an RV. Doug