Some light interior remodeling

[Roly]

Steel,

Excellent work and documentation...I suffer envy.

Roly

[Steeldriver17]

I was feeling pretty lazy today so not much more progress. Any bit of progress is good though. Where the old fridge used to be, I had said I was planning on installing drawers. My woodworking skills aren't all that great. Plus I don't have access to precision tools. No table saw or miter saw, just a mini circular saw from harbor freight, some squares, and measuring tape.

Before I bought the chinook, I was seriously considering buying a 5 window school bus with a 7.3 power stroke and building it out. I didn't go that route because of the price of building supplies right now, plus I really like the one piece fiberglass she'll of the chinook. But, one of my plans for the school bus did get implemented into the chinook.

I absolutely love tool boxes. I think they are beautiful and functional. So...where the fridge used to be I have installed a husky 5 drawer tool box. Nice soft close roller bearing slides, and the black looks nice next to the light Baltic birch plywood.

Is this look for everyone? Certainly not, but it's perfect for me. It has that industrial look I love and it saves me the trouble of having to build drawers. I still have to add the face frame on the left side of the box and build out the top of the compartment to cover up the vent but that's a project for another day.

[Chinnin-about]

I see you found your Chinook. Is it a diesel like you had hoped?

[Steeldriver17]

Unfortunately not. I have a feeling that the few people who own the 7.3 chinooks don't ever plan to get rid of them. V10 will have to do for now.

[Steeldriver17]

I got some work today. I started off by building the cabinet boxes for the stove and refrigerator. Once I had the boxes all together, I was able to put the butcherblock counter top on and figure out how it needed to be cut. Cutting the butcherblock was scary. Any mistake here would prove to be a $100 mistake. All went well though.

Next step was to start cutting some face frames. I got the vertical face frames cut, but I also cut my finger pretty good so I stopped here for the day. I'll pick up where I left off tomorrow.

I made some pretty frustrating and annoying mistakes. First one I made was I cut the cabinet box sides about 3/8 of an inch too short by forgetting to account for the hinge on the fridge door. You can see in the face on picture the method I used to fix it. I notched the underside of the counter with a oscillating multi tool about 1/2 of an inch. Unfortunately this isn't nice to look at. I'll just have to deal with it because I am not buying another sheet of plywood or another counter top.

Another mistake I made. When I removed the lounge chair, I made a plywood box exactly the same size as the seat base. This unfortunately ended up being too big and stuck out from the cabinets. So again out came the oscillating multi tool. On the front where the face frames are, this doesn't really matter, it's hidden. On the side of the cabinet, this is painfully obvious. You can see the seam where I cut the plywood. I'll probably put some towel hangers on the side of the cabinet to cover up this mistake.

Underneath the stove, I have a HUGE amount of space. I can put two 10" drawers here, or some combination like 12 and 8. I also am going to retain access to underneath the fridge. Every little bit of space is valuable in a smaller vehicle, and to the left of the wheel well there is still quite a bit of space there. I will make this face frame hinge down like what used to be under the oven and fridge.

I'm still debating on how I want to finish the plywood. I know that I want to stain the counter darker for some contrast. I would be open to suggestions for the best way to retain the light color of the face frames and cabinet boxes, but finish them nice.

[Steeldriver17]

I forgot to mention it. I said I was going to go with a chest freezer converted to a fridge. I could not for the life of me find a 3.5 cubic foot chest freezer anywhere. I checked 9 or 10 stores. So I picked up a mini fridge from menards. It has a great energy star rating and was the right size. It has a tiny little freezer inside which will work because the only thing I'd use a freezer for is making ice. An added benefit of a door fridge is I gained a ton of counter space on top of it. That will be nice. This area is also the perfect height for me to use the laptop while standing when I get sick of sitting.

I still need to run the outlet from behind the stock fridge over to the new cabinet fridge. This should be pretty easy. After that I will finish framing out the tool box and closet and put some flooring down. I'll have to run some quarter round along the base of everything co clean up the edges and it should be good to go.

[Steeldriver17]

Today I started tackling the electrical work. First thing I did was take apart the outlet that was behind the stock fridge. I would no longer be using this outlet. All the outlets in the chinook are daisy chained on the same circuit . This box gets it's power from the GFCI outlet next to the bathroom and the power continues out of this outlet to the outlets in the overhead cabinet as well as the outlet in the VCR cabinet.

I extended the wire coming from the GFCI outlet by splicing on another piece of 14/2 romex. Instead of using wire nuts, I used these connectors. Just strip the wire, lift the lever, insert the wire, and close the lever. A little more expensive than wire nuts but superior in every way. I made sure to cover the ground wires in electrical tape, taped shut the levers so they won't work their way open, and wire loomed it back up.

I fed all 3 wires down the line to the cabinet under the stove. That left me with this:

[Steeldriver17]

Damnit, I typed up a long post for this next part, went to preview it and lost connection while the preview page loaded. When I hit back on my browser, all my writing was gone. Let's try this again...

From here I cut all the wires to the same length, spliced them back together with the same connectors as before, only this time with 3 holes instead of 2 holes. Some electrical tape, wire loom, and a cable keeper and it was good to go. I eliminated the outlet that used to connect these together but if I ever decide to add another outlet, it will be easy to get to.

I probably should have put these inside a junction box but decided against it. There is no exposed wire, everything is fastened in place, and this will be behind some drawers so won't ever get shifted around.

Next thing I did was move the outlet for the microwave down to this same spot. The microwave is on its own dedicated circuit and I want to repurpose this for my fridge to plug into. Probably not necessary for a small, low energy mini fridge to have its own circuit but I wasn't going to use this outlet for anything else so it made sense.

I started by opening the outlet up. It is a style of outlet called a self contained outlet. It was tricky to get open but about 10 minutes with 4 small flathead screwdrivers and I got it. I fished the wire down behind the kitchen wall, cut to length, and reinstalled. Cleaned it up with some tape and wire loom, fastened it in place, and it was good to go. I had to go to home Depot to grab a new outlet, box, and face plate because this style of outlet requires a special tool to reinsert the wires and I ended up breaking a little metal piece inside. No big deal. I drilled a hole in the center divider of the cabinet, fished my fridge plug through, and I was done.

Flipped my breakers back on, tested everything, and it all worked as it should

Tomorrow I will finish out the face frames and start working on drawers. I also will have to disassemble it all one more time to stain the counter top and sand and finish the face frames. I've run into a little hiccup in the toolbox and closet area but will hopefully get that wrapped up this weekend.

[Steeldriver17]

Just for fun, here is how I got the self contained outlet open. There's probably a tool for this.

And here is a shot of the absolute mess I'm making in the garage. It looks like a tornado or a tasmanian devil came through here.

I've got a 30 yard dumpster coming this Friday. I have a bunch of useless stuff as well as construction debris from this and other projects on my house to get rid of. Hopefully after 2 weeks when the dumpster rental ends I will only own what I can fit into my chinook. Then at the end of July I move out of my house and into the chinook.

[chin_k]

It is difficult to not to be messy when you are working, but looking at the workmanship you did, I can tell you are very organized, meticulous and thoughtful. I will need to be more skillful at the electrical work I did. Thank you for sharing your progress with us.