Cabinets in a campervan take the build from a mattress in the back of a cargo van to, “oh they meant to live in there!”. In our promaster campervan build we wanted to make sure we had plenty of storage so that we could stay out in the wilderness for long stretches and have everything we needed to stay comfortable on the road.
Floor to Ceiling Cabinets
Andy built our floor-to-ceiling cabinets “in situ” which means in place. He constructed the floor to ceiling cabinets by scribing the verticle pieces to the van walls and securing them to the floor with cleats screwed to the floor and to the ceiling using brackets that attached to furring strips on the ceiling.
The horizontal shelves stiffened up the whole assemble and those were installed using either cleats for the shelves that would hold a lot of weight, or pocket holes for those that wouldn’t have as much weight.
Floating Upper Cabinets
We knew that we needed our upper cabinets to hold a lot of weight. We planned to use 2/3 of them to hold the majority of our clothing and I can pack a lot of clothes in a small space. So we knew we needed to attach them to more than just ceiling furring strips in order to have the weight capacity we needed.
Andy designed the upper cabinets to hang over the metal horizontal van rib. That means that the structural rib would be supporting most of the weight and the ceiling furring strips were there for stability and additional strength.
To install the dividers for the upper cabinets, we used pocket holes. We built the entire assembly outside of the van and installed as one piece.
Kitchen Lower Cabinets
The lower kitchen cabinets are the most “traditional” cabinets in our van. The cabinets were built outside of the van and brought in as one piece. The cabinets were attached to the floor using cleats and the wall using the massive furring strip we had run on the lower horizontal rib. The butcher block countertop provides alot of stability to keep everything from rocking side to side.
Building Drawers
We had never built drawers before! This was the only major skill for this build that we had no experience with, so off to YouTube University we went! We found an awesome series of videos that Shara Woodshop Diaries put together on how to make drawers without any super specialized equipment! These videos were incredibly helpful! We were able to build all 9 drawer boxes for this build in just 6 hours with her awesome tips!
Drawer and Door Fronts
We originally thought we would be making our door and drawer fronts. I had my heart set on shaker style and when we started looking into making them we realized that it was going to be a massive undertaking. Since we only had a few weeks left to build, we ran some numbers and figured out it would actually only be about $100 more expensive to order our drawer and door fronts than we would have just spent in materials. We decided Andy’s time would be better spent putting in hours with his consulting job and we ordered all the drawers and doors from Fast Cabinet Doors.
Fast Cabinet Doors allowed us to have 14 pieces in custom sizes made in just 2 weeks. They arrived on pallet, and were already sanded and ready for their first coat of paint. We could have even had them bore the holes for hinges but since we already had the Kreg Cabinet Hinge Jig we did them ourselves. We were really impressed with the quality and the speed!
Painting Cabinets
There are a few key tips we can pass on about painting cabinets:
- Sanding is the most important part! Be sure you are sanding between every coat if you want that smooth finish! If you don’t sand between coats, or at the very least before your final coat, you will probably end up with that orange peel texture on your cabinets. Also that first coat of paint on bare wood is going to raise the grain and you’ll def want to knock that down with some sanding before moving to the next coat!
- Read the paint can! All that text on the back of the paint can? It has a ton of important information, like what temperatures/humidity the paint needs to cure properly. How long you should wait before sanding (see number 1). What should you use for solvents to wipe down your surface after sanding? All that good stuff! The paint company wants their product to look beautiful and last a long time, so they give you all the information to do a good job!
- Use good-quality brushes and rollers. I know it’s tempting to buy those $0.25 chip brushes by the bag but I promise you will regret it. Buy one or two of the nicer brushes and you won’t be pulling out your hair trying to remove 8234 bristles from your paint. My personal favorites are the Wooster Shortcut 2″ Angle Brushes. I use them for everything!
More than anything else painting is what is going to elevate the look of your cabinets from “homemade” to “professional” so it is definitely worth time and attention!
Specialized Tools for Campervan Cabinets
Budget Breakdown
Previous Costs: $15,537.19
Note: All costs are as of April/May 2024
- Countertop: $219
- Paint: $102.94
- Paint Supplies: $62.88
- Edge Banding: $51.67
- Drawer Slides: $78.58
- Pocket Hole Plugs: $7.97
- Door and Drawer Fronts: $991.06
- Door Hinges: $43.29
- Additional Lumber (We used some left overs from other projects): $277.31
- Total Cost of Hardware (We didn’t separate hardware by area of the van but most of it was used in cabinets so I’m including it all here): $109.62
New Costs: $1,944.32
TOTAL RUNNING COST: $17,481.51
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