Wire closet shelves

[Roy in TO]

We were able to add closet shelves at a low cost without attaching anything to the fiberglass itself. Although time consuming all that was needed was a piece of chain, some cable ties, six wood screws, a wire shelf meant for house closets and a little electrical tape. This is one of the fixes I was able to accomplish while at Bolerama 2006 (We weren't really trying to be antisocial staying by away from the crowd; we were merely trying to get our trailer ready for a big trip coming up a few weeks later). This is the result:





The first step was to place the chain over the closet rod and tie it together with cable ties.





4 shelves were cut from one 8' length of coated wire closet shelving. Measuring, calculating, cutting and bending the wire shelves was time consuming because the outer wall of the Boler is curved and the closet is not formed square. The back wall is narrower because of the way the rear left side attaches to the door frame and outer wall. On my trailer the top of the entry door is narrower than the bottom which affects the shape of the closet.

The top, second and bottom shelf were cut and 3 of the ends bent into the shape below.





In the left hand picture above, the end of the top left corner gets cut progressively shorter the closer the shelf is to the floor. The length bend on the top right corner is relatively stable because this is only allowing for the difference between the lip of the doorframe where it attaches to the rear left closet wall. To keep the shelves stable, the length of the bottom left and right "arms" lengthen as one approaches the belly band, which is the deepest portion of the closet.

The other picture above shows how I cut and bent the outermost segment of the wire on the "arm". The loop attaches the shelf to the wood that is glassed into the closet on either side of the door opening using screws.

The back of the top and 2nd shelf are set into the chain and the front is screwed into place as shown below. The bottom shelf is simply laid on the wheel well.





The cutlery shelf is simply set into the chain at the back and hung from the second shelf from the front using cable ties at the desired height. Note that the cutlery shelf does not have the forward arms the other shelves do. That is for 2 reasons, the first being that I forgot the cardinal rule of measure twice and cut once and secondly the shelf it is attached to and the chain at the rear keeps it in place. A Scrap of the wire shelf and a cable tie with some electrical tape is then used to keep the tray from sliding around in transit by simply drilling a small hole in the cutlery tray in the desired position. When fully seated our cutlery “church key” keeps the tray from sliding side to side and front to back





I have not provided any measurements because the measurements will differ based on what height one places the shelves.

For many good closet mod ideas done by others here see Added shelves to Closet, other things we have done can be seen in the thread Restoring our Boler American.