The lines are becoming blurred for just what "Resto Mod" category is being worked on. Is it new wood, propane, fresh or waste water or electrical? Or is it simply a refrigerator? Should there be another separate category "Appliances"? Is it just more planning? I chose Galley & Greatroom because the refrigerator cabinet is a central component to the main living area.
My refrigerator compartment originally housed a storage cabinet at the top and an icebox below that, all on top of a 20 lb horizontal propane tank compartment at the bottom resting on the wing. And on the interior side - another storage area between the tank compartment and the living space below the ice box.
Here's the original icebox and the replacement donor fridge, a Hadco 410. Incidentally, if any of you have an owner's manual and/or installation manual for a Hadco 410, I'd sure like a copy - paper, digital, whatever. When I get to the Holiday range, I'll be sharing the document for it.
Now the donor refrigerator is not overly big, and will fit pretty well. My concern is that should it fail (and I did bench test it and found it to work very well indeed), I'd have to replace it. I'd like such an event to net us a newer, larger, nicer fridge. But what fridge? Of course the new fridge would first of all need to fit through the camper door. And once inside it would need to slide into a cabinet with the right size rough opening width, height and depth!
So way back last summer I took rough measurements of my cabinet spaces and located the largest fridge possible in the RV parts catalog - a Norcold 410. If memory serves correctly, I chose the brand over other popular brands because of the narrower width allowing it to fit through our narrower door opening.
I also downloaded the Norcold 410 installation manual and verified I could indeed install that fridge correctly, considering such things as cabinet dimensions and venting requirements, even going so far as to verify with a Norcold technician that my donor Travel Queen upper roof vent had enough square inches for proper venting.
I wanted the fridge weight as low as possible for center of gravity reasons, but considering ease of access for the end user. The new fridge has top controls, but the donor fridge has controls on the bottom. I didn't want it to be impossible to light the donor fridge, especially as we age, and I have no reason to believe the donor fridge might not last forever! I had only to PLAN for the new expensive fridge - and to build for both possibilities.
I knew I couldn't go too high, as the rounded roof started at some point in reducing cabinet depth. Early on I realized the upper cabinet could remain (yea - more storage), because there wasn't enough depth there anyway. But what was the maximum top for my fridge cabinet in light of the rounded roof line and reduced cabinet depth? I discovered that point was about 3" below the cabinet opening originally used by the icebox.
Measuring down from that height I located the position of the fridge shelf (the bottom of the cabinet opening height) and found that for the new tall fridge (Norcold 410) that height was EXACTLY at the lowest spot it could go and still retain the 24" cabinet depth - right even with the top surface of the wing's 2x2 (that had originally been cut out by Travel Queen for the propane cabinet, but that I am leaving in place for structural needs). Now that was quite a coincidence!
Of course my donor fridge (Hadco 410) was considerably shorter and I had plenty of room below the fridge for whatever: storage, utility runs, etc. But if I have to replace the donor fridge in future with the taller fridge I'll have to cleverly re-route some utilities to accommodate the bigger fridge, because I would lose the "under" and "behind" space immediately!
I'm looking at: a water fill line, a galley grey water drain line, at least two runs of 110V line, several 12V lines, propane lines. Anything going from under the galley cabinet or range or fridge over to the front or right sides of the camper. Tight!
After determining my height and depth constraints I moved on to width. This was an important step as well, because I didn't want the fridge door to not open as fully as possible. I'm uncertain just how the Norcold 410 door opens, but after closely looking over and measuring the Hadco 410 (donor fridge) I discovered I could install it and still get fridge shelves in and out and access the fridge contents acceptably - quite comfortably even.
So with pencil in hand I began to mark up the cabinet face and wing shelf to establish locations and cut lines, keeping in mind that I wanted to save removed pieces of the face for patches such as I did on the wet bath face boards near the bottom.
After a full day of just planning and measuring and considering utility runs and a combination of keeping figures and ideas both in my head and on paper and images of Carebears swirling around in my head I finally determined I had done all the planning I could and started to cut. I couldn't go any further until I was able to receive the visual assistance of actually building something!
The pencil lines here in the next photo represent the position of a half inch walls housing the fridge. The one on the right represents the left hand position (from inside the camper) of where the cabinet wall will be placed for the fridge to slide in against. The two areas on the left represent the right side positions (from inside the camper) of the donor fridge and the possible larger, future fridge. And it is important for proper fridge operation to have the side, bottom and top walls right next to the fridge exterior dimension. That allows the refrigeration process of lower vent/upper vent/convective air flow to take place efficiently.
This picture shows the inside surface of the donor fridge right side cabinet wall carried forward to the back surface of the cabinet face boards. You see it as a vertical pencil line.
Here is the original cabinet face, complete with new cut-out pencil marks - but you cannot see the marks in the picture - followed by the cut out opening and removed sections.
In the next picture you see four openings. The top opening is the original, and retained, upper storage cabinet (with hinged door). The second opening from the top is the space below the upper cabinet that doesn't have the required 24" depth for fridge installation, it will become a map (Atlas size), book, laptop, cookie sheet, griddle, or otherwise similar-sized storage shelf location. Depth will be about 13", the same as the cabinet above it, allowing fridge venting behind. The third opening is for the fridge itself, and the opening at the bottom will be a shoe shelf. No boots, there's not enough height for boots, but when you come in the camper the shoes can go here instead of underfoot at the entry door.
In the event of a future fridge replacement, the shoe storage will disappear and we'll have to figure out something else in that regard, but for now, DW and I had brainstormed these storage spaces to take advantage of what sizing requirements we were left with, and I think we came up with some grand solutions!
