Atfore

So this trailer mod started like this:

Leslie: Set the table, it’s almost time to eat.

Chris: What table? (Looks around as if table will erupt from gaucho/couch like Athena from Zeus’s head.)

Leslie: Ah, yes. Hmm.

I’m not saying that having the trailer that with two couches, and thus was dubbed the “party trailer” wasn’t fun.  And yes, that is the adult party trailer, hehe. But the morning after those great parties would be so much nicer if there was  table to sit at. Anyway, for several years I thought about my very meager carpentry skills and the beautiful banquette plans that were clearly designed for people who were real carpenters, or who could at least nail two boards together without it looking like something that would shame a refugee shack.

Now my M.O., when faced with something that I might want to build, but that would take more carpentry skills than I have, is to make some measurements, transfer those to an OmniGraffle (or Visio for you WinDoze folks) diagram of my trailer, pour a glass of nicely chilled Chardonnay and pop the Ikea catalog.  Nine times out of ten I score, and for that tenth time, if I just wait a couple of years they will come out with something new and I will score again.  Yay me!

So for this plan we used refrigerator cabinets. Two of them.  We nearly completed a re-do of our trailer last year. We finished enough to use the trailer, and have taken several trips since then.  The Ikea cabinets are holding up very well and  we have been pleased with the results.  More on that soon. I really do need to finish those blog entries ; I like to see this as a journey.  Either that or I procrastinate very well.  But I digress.

This current mod allows us to seat 4 small people who are very good friends for dinner; it is snug. As an added bonus we get  some very nice storage underneath. Since this is based on Ikea cabinets, there are drawers that will fit.  This was important because the gauchos (couches) had 4 bins for underneath storage that we used.  We get a decent bed for 1 or 2 people and a great place to work and eat. You can tell from the drawing that we shaped the backs  of the cabinets to fit the trailer, but that was very simple; we just cut diagonal edges. We weren’t worried about how it looked because it will be topped with a sheet of very nice birch veneer plywood.

Here is the 36″ cabinet fitted.  It’s not attached to the floor yet. We raised the cabinet 1/2″ off the floor with recessed pine 2X4s. That gave a solid base and the recessed wood gives the cabinet a bit of a floating look. Very modern. Also, the drawers will not open if you put the cabinet directly on the floor, they need at least 1/2″ of clearance to open properly.

The green cabinet on the left is an 18″ Ikea base cabinet with 4 drawers; this was part of the previous Ikea mod.  We covered the sides of the cabinet with green plastic.  Makes for a fun and bright interior.  Bright colors are fun, but for the banquette we are going to stay with natural birch with a polyurethane finish. We plan to top the seats with bright orange upholstered cushions, but have not really planned that out yet.

Shaping the plywood seats is an exercise with our old friend the compass.

Or at least it should have been.  Chris decided to try to shape the seats using a belt sander after rough cutting the board.  Nearly 8 grueling hours later and the gods only know how many rounds of sand, fit, sand, repeat, he agreed that the compass is best.  However, the seats are beautifully fitted, aren’t they?

Chris had to go to Hong Kong for business, so we put the project on the back burner for a week. That was OK because I needed to figure out how to suspend the table.  I waffled between some very spiffy and pricy boat hardware from Garelick and  a home-grown method I cooked up with an Ikea leg and  aluminum channel.

Wonder which way I’ll go?

There was a hiatus between dry fitting, hole cutting and the actual installation of the water heater. There was some cabinet work that needed doing before we could complete the heater installation. Our Master Plan involved ripping out all the old base and tall cabinets and replacing them with Ikea cabinets. The benefits included zippy interior fittings along with instant doors with the proper design aesthetic.  Besides, they look amazing in our Ikea kitchen.  What’s not to love?   Wee problem though, Ikea kitchens are square and Airstreams are roundy. Our good friend John introduced us to the perfect tool to fit a square cabinet into a round Airstream.

The Compass

You remember, your old friend from third grade. Well, it turns out that you can trace a wonderful curve on a slab of Ikea press board, trot that press board over to your handy Jig saw (our Brand of Choice is Bosch) and et voila an Airstream-fitted cabinet side.  Now, the tedious part is to do this properly, you must have your tired and irritated helper hold the cabinet side perfectly in place, while you traipse back and forth, cut a curve, fit that cut against the trailer side and cabinet base (held perfectly in place- helper irritated, tired and now hungry), draw a new line for a better fit….repeat.  You repeat this until the fit is perfect or your helper smacks you on the head and demands a beer.

In reality each tall cabinet took roughly a day to fit. This is also where you discover the concept of Good Enough.  What is Good Enough for me might be clearly a Crappy Job for your helper, or vice versa. Ahhh, the opportunities for neighborhood entertainment are endless. Especially when you do this work in the front yard and your helper is your spouse.

Below is a picture of the cabient slot in the trailer.  We have dry fitted the other cabinets and the new bathroom.  We had not cut any holes yet, but you can see where the hole will be cut.  Dry fitting the base cabinets is extremely easy with the compass. It is also a one woman job.  This alone ensures that the next trailer I do will not have any tall cabinets.

Above you can see the cabinet, now dryfitted and attached to the adjacent short base cabinet with a clamp. You can see the curves that we cut in the Ikea tall cabinet.

Pretty nifty for a tool you used last in third grade!

Each of these sets of steps occurred over a weekend. So, each Saturday morning Chris and I sat at the island in our kitchen and planned the weekend’s work. The “Cut the Hole in Trailer” Saturday morning mission brief went something like this…

Leslie “We need to cut the hole in the trailer for the water heater…”
Chris ” OK, where?”
Leslie ” I thought you knew where!”
Chris ” Me!! I thought you had all the plans!!”
Leslie ” I have the visually appealing design plans..you have the rip open the side of the trailer plans.”
…

Now I admit to some hyperbole here, but I can say that cutting a 12″ x 14″ hole in the side of my perfect vintage trailer was, well breathtaking.

So I left.  I left the kitchen, block, town.  I figured three hours would just about do it.  I went to Ikea and then to Trader Joe’s with a brief stop at Target to check out the latest from Isaac Mizrahi.

When I returned, Chris had cut a perfect hole and was well on his way to dry fitting the water heater.

“What, and you didn’t wait for me to see how you did it?” He’s right, you know he really can’t win.

To hear him tell it, was pretty simple. We were replacing nearly all the interior cabinets with Ikea cabinetry. All of those cabinets, including the one that would hold the heater, were assembled and dry-fitted. So the dead simple approach was to fit the heater inside the dry-fitted cabinet and draw on the interior around the edge of the cabinet. When he removed the cabinet, the outline was left on the wall. He then just cut from the inside out following the line he had drawn. Tools used? Mostly a Dremel with a cut-off wheel and metal snips

Above., left looks from the inside of the trailer out. Above, right, the outside of the trailer in.

We have found that the aluminum skin on our trailer is soft enough that this makes for a simple and controllable cutting. I would not use anything more powerful than the Dremel.  A a standard sized cutoff wheel on a grinder is just too aggressive. It cuts through the thin aluminum like butter.

One interesting note on both of the pictures, you can see the U-Channel that the aluminum shell is attached to.