Renovation

The problem is only if your 5'10" or taller I think. My design for the back overhead cabinet was good in concept.....bad in execution. The issue was if you wanted to sit and lean back on the back rest, if you were the least bit tall, you whacked the back of your head on the bottom of the cabinet. After doing it a few times last year I vowed that this years winters project  was to redesign the cabinet.

So here goes nothing!

First order of business is deconstruction, which actually started with a visit to polar mobility to remove the refridgerant so that I could take down the A/C unit in the middle of the cabinet.

 Once everything was taken apart, it was a blank canvas.

And once I started....I was committed. The plan was to simply "push" the cabinet back into the engine room. Leaving the vertical steel supports in the wall meant some changes to the cabinet storage spot locations, but otherwise a simple concept.

Again I wanted to follow and highlight the curvature of the roof line. I know inside the cabinet you won't really see the contours.....but I would know!

It was time to cut the base and push it back into the engine room.

Houston, we have a problem...

After I cut the base and put it in place, I remounted the front of the cabinet to see how things looked. Once things were in place it was obvious we had two problems. The first I was expecting. Due to the metal vertical supports, I had to move the hole for the cabinet a couple inches towards the outside. Therefor the openings in the front face and the cabinet in the back do not line up. The second I didn't think through until I started to cut the holes. There are two ventilation stacks coming from two roof vents/louvers. Originally designed to provide air flow to the occupants of the bus, the routing into the passenger compartment has long since been removed. When I refurbished the vents up top I made sure to place a 4" pipe to allow for directing of the air flow. Now that same idea is in my way, as the path of the pipes is directly through the cupboards. So I'll have to let that problem ruminate for a while so I can problem solve.

In the mean time I want to create the 'backs' of the rear cabinets and, of course, I want them to follow the roof line, not full of sharp 90 degree corners. So I first traced the shape of the cabinet opening.

Transferred those to some 3/4" MDF and created a laminate press/jig

Then I put in a number of cross braces, cut my strips of 1/8" wiggle wood, lathered them with glue

And tried to use every hand clamp I had in my shop...