Kitchen Cabinet

Whilst parked up camping this weekend we realised that the biggest pain we have at the moment is that when we arrive anywhere we have to unpack a bunch of boxes and "set up camp", and then if we want to go anywhere we need to break camp and stick everything back into their boxes again.  Also, when we stop up somewhere, in order to make a cuppa we have to get the gas hob out, hook it all up, dig out the kettle, the cups and all the bits we need.  This was not a great hassle but slightly inconvenient and something we'd dearly love to avoid when we're touring later this year.  So we decided to design a kitchen cabinet to go into the van behind the driver's seat and opposite the sliding door.   This is what we have come up with so far.

The cabinet doesn't have to be permanent like the one we built in the back.  In fact we definitely want it to be easily removeable so that we can take it out when we are not camping and easily put it back in when we go camping.  As it will be sitting where the rear seats go in the Kombi we don't want to remove the potential for having them back in so the cabinet needs to be easy to take out.    We plan to hold it in place with the load lashing points in the back and with bungees.  One bungee will go around the plinth at the base in order to pull it back into the van wall and one will go over the top at the back to pull the cabinet into the floor.   As we thought more about this we decided the bungee over the top will run under the work surface out of sight behind the main cabinet so it does the job right but is out of the way.  To remove the cabinet simply unhook the bungees and lift it out.

The cabinet will basically be rectangular.  No complicated 'following the curved edge of the van wall' like in the case of the rear cabinet.  This will make creating it shed loads easier.  I believe the wall of the van is such that just under the window is slightly further out than floor level.  So if the cabinet sits against the wall at the floor there will be a gap at the top.  The plan then is to make a worksurface on the top that overhangs the basic rectangular cabinet and thus abutts the wall just under the window.   This overhang can hide a pair of hooks at the back of the cabinet which the bungee can feed through.

The basic cabinet will be made from simple 2"x1" wooden slats, cut to the right size.   It will be walled and backed with MDF panels.  I will add a floor and shelf also cut from MDF.    By adding an MDF floor to the cabinet anything inside it will be held in place when the cabinet is picked up and taken out of the van.   This means it can be used to permanently store all the camping stuff we want in it and simply put in the shed.  When we go camping we pick up the cabinet, carry it to the van, strap it in and we are ready to go.  Simples.

I am thinking that the floor will have a 2" plinth underneath it which will be used to strap a bungee around to hold the whole thing in place against the back wall, allowing the doors to be opened when held thus.  However I'm also thinking this will look a bit untidy and be unnecessary when we are parked up, so perhaps the best approach is to not have this plinth and instead when we travel use a bungee around the front to hold the cabinet in place and also keep the doors shut.    This might be a better solution but needs some more thought.

The cabinet dimensions are determined by a few factors.  As we want to lash it in, it needs to fit between the load lashing points on the van floor, width-wise.  In terms of  depth, we want to keep two large gas bottles in here stored one behind the other.  And in terms of height we want it to fit under the window so we have full access to the window.  That pretty much defines the size.

The top of the cabinet is going to be used to make use of existing kit we own.   We looked into buying a SMEV gas hob and sink combination with a glass top to put on the top of the cabinet.  That would be sweet, but seeing as the prices are about £200-£300 for the hob and sink alone we are talking a fortune.  We already own a perfectly serviceable gas hob and want to make use of it.  In addition we'd like a sink built in.  But we don't have water tanks in the van, nor drainage so we want it as simple as possible.  As such we're not looking for anything more hi tech than a plastic washing up bowl - in a perfect world perhaps one with a lid on it.

So we are going to make the top of the cabinet out of kitchen worksurface material.  This is both water and heat resistant which makes sense as we're sticking a cooker and washing up bowl into it.  Into that surface we are going to cut rectangular holes and drop our gas hob and washing up bowl into those holes.   Most washing up bowls come with a lip on them which is what will stop the bowl dropping through into the main cupboard.   Unfortunately our cooker does not have a lip so we're going to have to modify the cooker slightly to add some sort of lip to stop it dropping through.  We will let the gas pipe drop through though, down into the cabinet to where the gas bottles will be stored, so it can be connected up underneath out of sight.   We shall make the worksurface as deep as we can sensibly do without getting too intrusive to the space in the van, so that there will be some space in front of the hob and sink to use as a typical work surface.

The cabinet will be designed to store two large gas bottles, our pan set, a complete set of plastic camping crockery and cutlery, our water bottle, washing up stuff, the Blackcat gas heater (till we fit a diesel heater) and any spare food we bring.  I would like to add a cutlery draw into it somehow but this needs to be thought of some more.

Finally, on the outside we'll add some hooks to hang kitchen utensils and some of those plastic push in tea-towel holders so we have a handy place to put the washing up stuff.  The two doors on the front (side opening) will have netting added to the insides as this makes excellent lightweight storage for all manner of odds and ends.

Edit:  Another thought after looking at this unit:  washable rollers instead of doors on the front.  Nice touch.
I'll post more thoughts on this as I have them and of course document it here when we come to build it.