Preparation
Building a home in a car
If there’s one thing i’m not, it’s organized. Things scattered on my desk, my wallet somehow in a new spot every time i’m trying to rush out the door. It’s not pretty. Leading up to this trip I knew that if I didn’t have a specific organization system in the Jeep, a place for everything, then it would end up looking like my cluttered desk. I set off to do some research.
Buying premade drawer solutions for the Jeep was pricy, and finding someone to do a custom build for me was a daunting task. So I attempted to create my own plan.
I knew I wanted the total height of the drawer stack to be about the same height as my Iceco VL60 fridge. Having never drawn a plan in my life, and possessing no artistic ability, I came up with the following:
From here, things started to progress beyond my skillset, so I called up my buddy Matt (a man of many skills and many tools) and we put this plan into motion. We decided on a combination of 3/4 inch and 1/2 birch plywood for the build.
We started with a platform fit to the back of the jeep. This would become the base for both the drawers and the fridge slide.
By the end of day 1 we had made 6 trips to home depot and our hands were filled with splinters, but we had a box!
The next step was the drawers. Sure, I can rationalize how to make a rectangle with wood: tack in some wood at 90 degree angles a few times and there’s your nice (hopefully) square box. Drawers were a bit more unknown.
I ordered four sets of these locking drawer slides, 3 for the drawers and one for the fridge.
I’ll admit, lining those slides up and making sure they were level and exactly the same depth was frustrating, but we finally got them!
Next up was paint, featuring Jess as the painter’s tape expert!
After the paint dried it was finally time to put it in the car. A perfect fit!
I used my newfound drawer slide knowledge to install a slide for my fridge and voila. The finished product!
I’ve also installed foam inserts in the drawers with cutouts for everything. Like I said, a place for everything. Not only do we know where everything goes, but it cuts out any clangs and bangs that would have come from our items flying around in transit.
And that’s the build! Yosemite here we come!