Kitchen Cabinets

I installed the serial number plate and got my T-22 form done! I'll go get it registered later this week.

I finished the last of the shell panels last week.

I've been using 1/4" Birch on all the panels, I've had to kerf cut some of them to get them to bend. The small upper panel in the back would not bend. I broke three of them trying to get it in. I finally realized that I just happened to have half of an 1/8" sheet of Birch in my shop. It conformed to the curve easily without having to kerf cut it. The next Spartan I do will be ALL 1/8" on the ceiling and curved sections.

Over the weekend I worked on the kitchen cabinets. Both base cabinets were in really bad shape. The framing was ok but the faces were falling apart. They are made of 3/4" Birch and were rotted and de-laminating. You can see the sink cabinet (Curb side) in my previous post. The Street side cabinet used to be the sink cabinet, it was a small cabinet because the stove sat next to it. Since I will be installing a cooktop I had to extend this cabinet to the full 50" width.

Above is the face-frame of the street side cabinet. I used dowels to build it.

Here is the cabinet installed.

The next thing I did was rebuild the over head bins. The bottoms of both were ok but the faces were falling apart.

Then I put up the wall panels and the upper cabinets. The closest refrigerator panel is just sitting in place for the picture.

In the above picture you can see the cutting board. I got this at Ikea. I had to cut it down a little to make it fit.

I also finished the framing of the pantry.

Almost done paneling

I'm almost done with the paneling. Yesterday I installed almost all of the remaining panels. The only ones left are the four small curved panels in the bedroom.

 

I also installed the panel on the front of the bed.

The cut-out is for the electrical panel, I will build a small door to cover it.

I worked on the framing for the pantry/bathroom wall also.

I still have a little more framing to do before I can put paneling up here.

The serial number plate, usually located on the hinge side of the front door frame was long gone, this is common on these old trailers. In order to get it registered I needed a new serial number plate. The serial number standard  for these year Spartans is (xx xx - xxxx) or (Length Year - Sequence Number). I was able to determine the serial number by a few things. One, I know this is a manor. Manor's are 25' in length. I was able to determine the year by a few clues like taillights, the original door handles, and the original layout. So I had the first half of the serial number (25 47 - xxxx), now I just had to find the sequence number. I finally found it in two places, one was on the street side of the tongue, C 4977 was stamped in it. The other place was on the back side of some of the cabinet drawers, 4977 was written in pencil. I assume this was to not get the drawers mixed up when building them.

So the full serial number is 25 47 - 4977. Now I just needed to make a plate. The plates vary greatly on these, some are nothing more than a small rectangle of aluminum with the number stamped on it, some are more elaborately shaped with the manufacturers name and address written on it. I believe my original one was the second kind. the shape of the original was still imprinted on the door frame so I took a small piece of plexiglass and traced the shape. Then I cut the plexiglass to shape and used it to trace the shape on a piece of aluminum. I then cut the aluminum to shape.

I was able to borrow a numeric punch die set this morning at work.

I will attach it when I get home this afternoon. It may not be all fancy like the original but at least now I can get it registered.

Sink Cabinet

Work is slowly progressing on the sink cabinet. I only had about an hour yesterday to work on it so far.

I had to re-arrange the bracing so the sink would fit. I also squared it up and attached it to the wall. I am working on the drawer area now.

Framing the bathroom walls and sink cabinet

Over the weekend I started work on the framing of the walls. First I laid out the bathroom, the only thing that will be in the bathroom is a toilet so it will be small. Here is the first wall.

The other wall will also serve as a pantry for the kitchen.

Once I put the ceiling panels in I will complete all the walls up to the ceiling. Next I moved on to the kitchen sink cabinet. Originally the sink was on the street side but I liked this layout better. The original cabinet on this side was in sorry shape. The facing is all 3/4" Birch, it was delaminating and rotted in several places.

I cut all new pieces out of 3/4" Birch, here they are laid out face down ready to be nailed together. Because this will now be a sink cabinet the original two drawers above the cabinet doors have been replaced with a blank panel.

Once they were nailed together I attached it to the cabinet frame. I had to cut down the cabinet frame to 60" to fit the new layout.

Here it is just sitting in place.

I still need to do a lot of tweaking to the cabinet before I can secure it in place. I have to re-position a lot of the bracing to make room for the sink, it is a stainless double sink from a '70 Airstream Safari.

Framing the Bed

To frame up the bed I first had to make and install the Birch panels on the bedroom walls.

I used the original panels as a template but for some reason they didn't line up perfectly. It doesn't matter though, the entire bottom half will be hidden by the bed and the top half will be covered with trim.

Next I built the base for the bed.

Then I built the rest of the framing. I used a 2x6 to make the curved section.

It rained the entire afternoon which made things go really slow. I still have a little bit of framing left to do on the nightstand section on the right. I will use two pieces of 3/4" plywood on top of the framing. One piece will be at the very back, the other larger piece will be hinged so it can swing up for storage access.

Finishing up the floor

I finished the floor today. It went down pretty easily.

As you can see in the last picture the floor does not go all the way to the back. The very back is where the bed will be so there is no need to run the floor all the way back.

After finishing the floor I worked on putting up the wall panels in the back bedroom.

The reason the electrical comes out here is that the bed will run from the opposite wall to about 12" from this wall, the rest of the space will be taken up a built-in footboard/night stand. The dual voltage electrical panel will be in a hidden, recessed panel in here.

Tomorrow I will finish installing the remaining three wall panels and then frame up the bed / nightstand.

Laying the cherry wood Floor

Now that I've got the walls up I've turned my attention to the floor. I will finish the ceiling afterwards. I need to get the floor down so I can get the couch and refrigerator in the camper, they have to come in through the front window opening. The door is only 24" wide but the window opening is 26" tall so I have 2 more inches to work with. Once the couch and fridge are in I can finally put the front window in and seal up the camper.

The flooring is engineered cherry that I got on closeout and was cheaper than most of the ugly laminate they had. I went to the store with the intention of buying laminate but then I saw this and realized that the weight is pretty much the same. If I remember correctly I got it for $1.19 sq ft. Cant beat that for real cherry!

First thing I did was clear the camper out completely.

Then I put down heavy weight felt paper.

I measured several points along the camper front to back to find the center and snapped chalk line along those points.

I then measured from the chalk line over to the first piece so it would be perfectly square with the camper. I'm having to scribe all the pieces that touch the front of the camper because the wall is curved.

Here is how far I got last night.

Hopefully I can finish up the floor and then finish the ceiling this weekend.

More Paneling

The paneling is progressing. This afternoon I put up three front ceiling panels and the cabinet over the observation windows.

The cabinet was a royal pain to get in!

Paneling

I worked the entire weekend on paneling the Spartan.

In the picture above you may notice the seam running from left to right. I did this to save on panels. I had a lot of left over pieces from cutting the walls to size at 65 1/8". I will put a strip over the open area in the center but it will be covered by a couch. The side pieces will be covered by built-in tables that will be on either side of the couch.

It is very slow going, especially now that I am into the curved panels. As you can tell from the last picture above I decided to keep the cedar panel in the center, it will run all the way back.

I was able to put the curved ceiling panels in by kerf cutting them before installing them, it made it much easier. They just popped right into place and held without any fasteners which left both my hands free to drill and screw them into place.

The last thing I did before calling it a day was work on the cabinet that goes above the the front windows.

The original was in really bad shape, so I used the original bottom and front as a template for the new one.

I actually completed it but did not get a picture of it before it got dark. Next I will hang it and the last three pieces in the front and then move on to the back of the camper.