Cabinetry & water

Now that all big things are framed out and most of the drawers are made, it’s time to make things pretty! I picked up some nice looking sheets of 3mm birch veneer from Bitraf to use as fronts for the drawers.

​Drawers are hard! We’ve not made things easy for ourselves by using cheap drawer slides that have practically zero adjustability. Also, we’re free-styling the drawers using whatever materials we have left so it’s more function over form at this point. Despite this, it turned out reasonably well. I’ll have to adjust a bit on the kitchen bench - both the fronts and the top.

​Now that we’re closing things up, we must add all those small things as well. The toilet will have a lock that need structural support. All panels needs magnet locks that are better than the cheap 1.5kg once’s you get at Clas/Biltema. For the fridge drawer, we use an 8kg magnet and for many of the others, we use 4kg ones. I have also realised that you can never have enough clamps!

When the main drawers for the kitchen were done, I started on the water system while AM was working on the remaining covers for the mattresses. We wanted to use a foot pump over a 12V pump to avoid waking up anyone sleeping in the van. The water system is quite simple. One 20 litre tank with freshwater, tube to the pump, foot pump, tube to the faucet, drain straight into the greywater tank. Both tanks are accessible from the side door, so it should be easy to empty and refill.

It may not seem like much, but I was very excited to see the water flowing for the first time. Flowing water makes life so much easier!