40v13: Kitchen

Organization

Drawers

Since the RV drawers in this rig are only about 11 inches deep (front to back I mean), I cannot use a “standard” silverware organizer (which I believe are generally 14 inches?).

Instead I found this one that fits relatively well when turned sideways, plus these two bins to keep it from sliding around too much.

Aesthetics

Glass

The glass panels in the cabinets are dark, but we can still see through them a little too well, especially under brighter lighting. The glass is a nice touch and we appreciate it, but we don’t always want to be able to see our junk inside =)

We are using static cling film on the inside of the glass to make it a little more opaque but give it a nicer look too. We decided to use a few different patterns to sort of help break up spaces (e.g. living room vs kitchen), and just for some nice variety.

This picture shows the difference – the left hand glass reflects the room while the right hand side (without film) shows both – the room reflection and the stuff inside.

Each of the photos below shows the pattern with the door open (top row), and then with it closed (underneath/bottom row). Please bear in mind that the pattern can only be seen with certain light and angles! Most of the time it can only be seen a little bit (if at all) behind the dark glass.

[left] The cabinets over the TV (and the control panel) have this vine pattern.

[center] The glass over the kitchen sink is using this forest film.

[right] This cross hatch pattern for the cabinets over the loveseat sort of tie in with the hatching in the picture hanging below them.

Functional

Fridge Door Handles

I am not a fan of how the fridge opens. It intentionally requires a strong tug to open (preventing mishaps on travel days) but in my opinion is not convenient to open.

We bought these suction cup handles to use instead. They are not nearly as decorative as I would like, but work great so far.

Pantry Shelf Sliding

The pantry shelves were sliding forward away from the back wall, allowing smaller things to fall down the resulting gap between shelf and wall.

My apologies – this is a little tough to get a picture of.
Here the camera is inside the pantry, looking up at the bottom of a shelf. The back wall is to the left, so this is looking at the right hand rear corner of the shelf.
The red arrow points to where I had placed a small screw into the side of the shelf, the head of the screw sticking out maybe a quarter inch or so.
This screw now catches on the vertical mounting strip, preventing the shelf from sliding forward.

I put screws in only at the rear of the shelf, on both left and right sides. I wish I had taken more time to pre-drill the holes, as it split the wood on a few.

Drawer Magnets Too Strong

We saw a great idea for the drawers and cabinets in this video (from the Off To See in the RV channel) – they used bottle caps to weaken the drawer magnets a tad (while not in transit I mean).

We found that washers do the same thing, making the drawers and cabinets MUCH easier to open while camping. We use somewhere between 20 and 30 washers in our rig.

Kitty Ladder

The cat really wanted to visit the loft but the ladder gave him trouble. Getting up the metal rungs was ok but coming down was not good.

We added wraps of outdoor carpet on the rungs and up one side to help him maintain grip on the way down.

Much of the time we take it a step further (sorry for the pun) by placing our step ladder under it as well, dramatically reducing the angle of the ladder. This blocks our fridge so we do it mostly overnight, or when we leave for a while, etc.

Step Ladder

Speaking of ladders, we bought this step ladder for use around the trailer, primarily in the kitchen. We went with this model because it is heavy duty enough to be solid and tall enough to allow me into the highest cabinets.

I like how some YouTubers have ones that fold away much smaller, but I use this one a lot and really appreciate how tall and sturdy it is.

Another Kitchen Outlet

We found that cords were a problem for us in the kitchen, so I added a new outlet to the left of the sink, near the TV.

I had a tough time finding the outlets I used to order (ELEGRP 15 Amp GFCI Outlet, 5-15R GFI Dual Receptacle) for the RV, not sure why that is? I did eventually find this one but it’s not quite the same – it was a real challenge getting the 12 gauge wire into the blades inside. If you use 14 gauge you should be fine.
In addition, I had to cut away plastic inside to accommodate a second set of wires, since this was not the last outlet in the chain.

To install, I pulled out the corner panel to the far right inside the cabinet, which hides access to the outlet in the corner underneath the cabinets, to the left of the stove.
I removed the outlet and pulled out the wires feeding it, leaving the wires that then extend to the next outlet in the chain.

I connected a new wire to the one I pulled from that outlet, fishing it through the space under the bottom shelf (this is like a mini crawl space under the cabinets where they ran wiring for the puck lights there).

I cut an odd shaped hole to fit the new outlet, and drilled a hole to pull the wires through. I then used scrap paneling from a project in our old RV to cover this inside the cabinet. Someday I hope to replace that with a rectangular box snug around the outlet, but I didn’t want to take the time for that just yet.

Spice Rack

We added a pull out spice rack into the narrow cabinet next to the microwave.

This model fits nearly perfectly except for the mounting rail. It does not quite reach to the rear of the cabinet to screw the mount to the back wall, and the mounting rail needs a trim piece underneath it to clear the lip of the cabinet.

I cut a piece of plywood to sit underneath the rack, giving it the boost in elevation it needs, but also giving me a solid platform to mount it to (in lieu of the back wall). I put a piece of lauan from our old RV on top of the plywood for aesthetics, but I did not need to – it can’t be seen unless you are very tall or on the ladder.