Materials/Spend
- Whitewood 18mm thick 4 pack x2 - £55
- MDF 18mm thick - Free
- Hardwood Ply Wood 9x1220x2440mm - £33
- Bendy Ply Wood - £45
- Hinges 2 pack x6 - £66
- Oak Handles - £4.50
- Woodscrews 35mm - £5.70
TOTAL: £203.50
I opted to build two sets of overhead cabinets - One on the driver side of the van running almost half the length of the van, over the top of my kitchen unit, then another cabinet the opposite side of the van, again running about half the length of the van, from the mid-way point to the rear.
As I touch on in my cladding post, to save money on cladding, I decided to fix my shelving directly to my battening and then clad around it, rather than fix the shelves to cladding that I’m not going to see.
Framing the cabinets
We started by making the timber frames for the front of the cabinets, using 18mm thick whitewood. We made two rectangular frames and then added two more uprights dividing the frame into three equal sections. We fixed the frames together with 35mm woodscrews.
Before screwing the top length of whitewood to the rest of the frame, we first made sure to screw the hinges in place. Once we’d attached all the hinges, we screwed the top length of whitewood to the frame.
Creating the sections
We then used 18mm MDF to divide the cupboards into three sections. To fix each bit of MDF to the frame, we sandwiched them between upright lengths of whitewood set a couple of centimeters back from the front edge of the frame.
As each bit of MDF was rectangular, we were initially going to scribe each corner so it would fit snug against the interior corner of the van. However I decided it didn’t need to sit flush, especially because I had wiring running across the roof of the van, so we just used a jigsaw to cut a nice even radius for each section of MDF.
It was then just a case of cutting and nailing 9mm plywood to the bottom of each timber frame to create the base of the cupboard.
Fixing the cupboards in place
If you’ve read any of my previous posts, I have lengths of battening across the interior walls and ceiling of my van, screwed directly to the metal frame of the van. Holding the cupboards in place, we first fixed the timber frame to any available batten running across the ceiling of the van.
We then cut some more sections of whitewood, one section for each individual cupboard width. In each cupboard, we screwed the piece of whitewood up against the interior wall to any available batten and then from the underside of the shelving, screwed up through the 9mm ply and up into the newly fixed piece of whitewood.
This meant that the shelf was fixed to the ceiling and the wall of the van.
Cutting the cupboard doors
We used some more 18mm thick MDF for each cupboard door, cutting six doors in total using a table saw. We attached the other half of each hinge to each door and then they simply clipped into place to the hinge we’d screwed to the frame of the cupboard.
Fitting the backs of the cupboards
Ideally this would have been a lot easier to do before fixing the cupboards in place but at the time we didn’t have flexible enough ply so we ended up fixing the shelves in place and then added the back of each cupboard whilst the cupboards in situ.
We managed to get hold of some 5mm thick bendy plywood and cut six sections for each cupboard. Before attempting to fix in place, we cut a quarter arc section of wood and used it as a template and pressed it up against the inside of each cupboard side and drew around it.
Using some glue, we then stuck some small noggins of wood around the drawn pencil marks, then used these to glue the ply into place at the back of the cupboards.
For the cupboard that houses the double plug socket, we cut a rectangular shape out of the ply for the plug socket to fit through and then screwed it in place.
For the cupboard that houses my consumer units, we fixed a lateral piece of MDF along the width of the cupboard so that we had something a bit sturdier to screw the consumer units to. I then unwired both units and we drilled a series of holes in the plywood to feed the cables through. Once the plywood was in place I then screwed the consumer units through the ply and into the lateral MDF and re-wired them.
The last thing I need to do after I’ve painted the shelving, is just put a bit of auto-carpet on the bottom of each cupboard and also fix some handles to each cupboard door.
If you have any questions at all, feel free to ping me an email or drop me a message on Instagram!
