The Difference a Week Makes

Let me explain something about where I live. Last week propane was about the most important thing in my van life. I checked the propane tank level twice last week. The second time, when I found the primary tank to be empty and switch-over to the secondary tank had happened, I got myself to the convenience store across the street. I did a propane tank exchange and got a couple days of freedom. This week, totally a different deal. I checked on Monday, switchover had happened and I was on the second tank. I didn’t really think about it until Friday when I changed it before leaving town. Not because I needed it, just because I figured I should. The difference in these two weeks?  It is no longer double digits below zero. Instead it is nearly sixty degrees warmer (and still not t-shirt weather)  The furnace is no longer running 50-75% of the time.

I am looking forward to it this year. Spring. I suppose I always do, but I feel really good this year. It was a tough winter and I survived it. I was riding out the storm of maybe the two coldest days in my lifetime inside a steel shell with an inch of insulation. There is something empowering in that. But now it’s over and I am ready to move on. At home I started the process of widening our driveway. Shaving off the side of the ten foot pile of snow at the end of my driveway. Throwing it out into the street to melt.

I did a little van work this past week. In my original plan I was going to build a floor to ceiling shelf with a refrigerator on the lower level, microwave in the middle and then up top kitchen storage drawers. As the van project expanded and its expenses revealed themselves, a refrigerator had to give way to a cooler. The microwave took up its spot in the middle but I discovered a problem with the plan. You can’t pull out a drawer near the ceiling and see into it. Drawers have to be below head level. Duh.  Wow, come to think of it, in my kitchen at home there isn’t a single drawer mounted in the upper cabinet set. Of course there aren’t! In a van, it is easy to think only about how far off the floor something is, forgetting that isn’t what is important at all.

The top, paper drawer, with
it's front glued in place and
sides ready.

The microwave had to move up to the top shelf.  Building a project like this you have to work out the whole mental chess game of the order of tasks.  I knew immediately after moving in the microwave had to move up a shelf.  (Luckily I had built it tall enough.) But it couldn’t move up until the electronics board had been completed and installed.  That couldn’t be done until a lineup of other things got done.  Basically it took me almost a year to get finalized.  This past Tuesday I did the move.  The microwave is held in place by two self tapping sheet metal screws that pass through the shelf and into the steel base of the microwave.  I am going to need to move up to the next size larger sheet metal screw.  In the process of van building whilst living, I have had to remove it so many times the screws have stripped out the hole in the microwave base enough to make the screws lose their grip.

You can't see it in this picture but the
drawer base of the missing drawer warps up.

I think it is a good idea to build the drawers in a project like this as removable units rather than actual built ins.  Doing so will allow me to pull the entire unit of five drawers out in case I need to work on something behind them.  Since a bunch of the wiring lives back there the likelihood is high.

The construction was pretty simple.  I used mostly 1/2” plywood to build the drawer frame.  With the exception of below the thin paper drawer I substituted 1/4” to gain that last little bit in drawer depth.  Unfortunately, Johnny Menard’s stores carry only the crappiest quality plywood in small (2’x4’) sheets.  So this drawer doesn’t work well because the plywood is warped upward.  I am hoping a little time will help it relax and flatten out a bit.  In the meantime the drawer catches as I push it in and I have to lift it up at the end to get it to fully close.

A drawer front being epoxied in place.
I think this is even the inside out one.

The drawers themselves are 6mm fronts and bottoms with 3mm craft plywood sides. I built them differently in one way. I used epoxy to glue the drawer front to the base. Doing so allowed me to build all the drawers in one night. Before I could only glue up two sides and wait an hour for the wood glue to set-up. By using epoxy, I had a firm square start to glue the other three sides to in about six minutes.  It wasn't super strong at that point but it didn't need to be just to support the sides and clamps while gluing.  You can't make any mistakes though.  One of the drawers I glued the front on inside (slightly rougher) out.  So I had to sand that a bit when the drawer was done and I can still kind of tell.  But I am thinking of covering these drawer fronts with fabric anyway and so it isn't going to be an issue.

The almost finished drawer set in place.

I am happy with how it turned out.  I need to take a night and reorganize the contents of all my drawers.  But I am happy to have gotten this done and mounted in place already the table and surrounding areas are looking cleaner. We go on our parental escape camping trip for a long week in the middle of July.  I am hoping to have a bunch of these little projects done by then to really have the BV ship shape.

I got a complaint from a regular reader who said I was forgetting to practice what I preach and only put one space after a period. I guess it makes a difference particularly on portable devices. I will try to do better. Lots of these posts I actually write on my iPod where double tapping the spacebar gives me an auto period. I get lazy but I do like to keep my audience happy.