1. Our cabinets were decaying.  There had been water damage that required significant repair, we knew we had a major project.
2. I have an Ikea kitchen and love the cubbys, drawers, fittings and thingamabobs that come with the Ikea Rationale fittings.
3. Minimal carpentry skills required for a truly professional looking finish.  Drawers, doors, pulls and even sinks are all Ikea-rrific.  You gotta love it.
4. I knew that I could do it.  I had done my own Ikea kitchen. I had bought the flat boxes and installed the cabinets. If I could DIY 21 linear feet of base cabinets, wall cabinets and another 14 feet of tall cabinets, I could DIY a 19 foot trailer, with help – of course.
5. Finally, design.  My house, with an Ikea kitchen, was one of Metropolitan Home’s 2001 Homes of the Year winners.  An Ikea kitchen is flat out beautiful and I love good design.

The picture above shows the run of kitchen cabinets dry-fitted in the trailer.  The order is from left to right: 24″ refrigerator-30″ sink-24″ oven-18″ tall pantry.  The pantry is next to the bathroom and on the other side of the bathroom is another 18″ tall cabinets that will be fitted with shelves for a linen closet and will also hold the electrical components and the two deep cycle batteries that we charge with a solar panel.  More on that soon.

Fitting the base cabinets is pretty simple. I’ve discussed my friend the compass in an earlier post. Our trailer does not have much of an arc below the mid-line.  I used the cardboard inside the Ikea boxes to sketch a rough pattern and then used the compass to make the cardboard patterns more precise.  When it looked like I had a pattern that was pretty close I cut the Ikea fiberboard, but only after bringing each piece inside the trailer and clearly labeling which piece went where and which side was up.  You have no idea how confusing all these square pieces of white fiberboard get after a couple of hours, or minutes. I became the queen of blue painters tape and sharpies.  A tip:  the fiberboard will shatter if you cut it with a jigsaw, but a jigsaw makes it really easy to cut the arcs that you need.  I found that taping the fiberboard with that blue masking tape that you use to mask windows worked perfectly.  No shattered  fiberboard edges, and I could scribe lines on the blue and then pull it right off after I made my cuts.  Perfect!

Here’s an after picture.

There are a few posts between here and there.  In this view the gaucho is pulled out  and the bed is made because my son is visiting and we use the trailer as a guest house.  I’m just on my way to the airport to pick him up.

Next post:  The final installation and my perfect floating counter….Yes, I did get it! Yay me.

1. I wanted a lower line. Not 5″, I wanted a sleek modern look.
2. I wanted the cushions to wrap around the curve of the trailer so we could snuggle into the corner.  I just love doing that.
3. I did not want to give up any comfort.
4. I wanted something that would last a bit longer, the cushions we had replaced in 2001 were already starting to get hard in places.

I talked to my trusty, neighborhood architect buddies at GreenMeadow Architects who suggested Latex Foam from an online reseller Absolute Comfort. Mark brought over a 4″ latex cushion that had been wrapped in Dacron batting and I sat on that for awhile. It seemed comfortable enough but would not bend, and I really needed it to bend.  The folks at Absolute Comfort assured me that there was not difference in sleeping between 4″ and 3″ so I bought Medium-Firm weight 3″ Latex Foam. I mentioned in an earlier post how that was not quite how it worked.

However, it really does wrap beautifully, as you can see in this picture of the cut foam dry-fitted onto the banquette in sleep mode. Even after I added the Dacron to both sides, and covered each cushion with a muslin cover, then a final slip cover they still wrapped nicely.

So the problem started the first night…well, it was damn hard to sleep on.

Really, hard.  I think I actually had bruises.  After a week both Chris and I agreed that this was not going to work and we needed some extra cush.  However, we had dropped some serious money on the latex so we weren’t going to start again.  Thanks again to Mark, who suggested the memory toppers from Target.  We have slept on these and they most definitely do the trick.  They also keep the flexibilty that I wanted in the foam, which I would have lost had I gone to the 4″ Latex.  So, I guess this is one of those situations where I muddled through and came out with the right answer.  Thanks also to my friend Mark!

If you are interested in how we cut the latex cushion like that, I used a Rival electric knife – works like a dream.  I’ve started a odd tools I like to use page and have added that to it.