Drawing room - creating a bank of 4 x 4 drawers

Everyone says that the more drawers the better so the driver's side of the troopy is going to be a big bank of drawers - underneath a metho stove and a sink.

First step is to do something about the rear window washer bottle. It sits in the wall where it will be completely impossible to access once the drawers are built.

So I organised a system with some nice reinforced tubing from Whitworths so you can fill the bottle from outside the van if you want to. This shows the interesting system that attaches the tubing to the washer bottle's filler cap.

Here you can see the black tubing snaking around in the wall - easy to pull the end out and fill it up.

One interesting little point is that the bottle needs a breather to let air out when you put water in - otherwise, you cant get the water into it. So there is a little nick in the black tubing at its highest point in the wall.

Second job is to add some aluminium bars to the side so there is a bit more surface for attaching the drawer supports to - you'll see what I mean shortly.

So now to get the overall planning sorted out. Just how long can the drawers be? how close the the back of the front seat should they come? How high can they be without looking silly? And what sort of benchtop do we want?

This is some of the febrile scrawling I've been doing to get the answers to those questions.

And having figured out the answers to some of the questions, these are the first two vertical panels - complete with the spiffy Hettich drawer runners attached (one the left one anyway).

The short drawer at the bottom is to leave space for the wheel-arch.

These are some cans of Techniglue. Not cheap, but marvellous epoxy stuff for gluing drawers together. Reputedly good at tearing the wood apart before it lets go. Get it from Caporns boatbuilding supplies at Brookvale.

And this is the first set of drawers with their techniglue joints curing in the Avalonian sun. Pretty good huh!