While I was working on the
microwave cabinet, that I have posted pictures of in the last couple of days, I was also trying to build in some more clothing storage and replace as much of the pretty ugly finishing that existed.
The rear of the trailer had one meagre upper shelf across the width with a fixed vertical front that was about five inches high. The shelf was about 11" front to back. I decided to widen the shelf to about sixteen inches to accommodate
light, folded clothing such as shirts, sweaters etc. To access this I put on two drop down flaps with a roller catch on each.
As with the door under the
microwave, I attached these flaps with piano hinge for rigidity and their bottom edge bears against the front edge of the shelf to hold them horizontal when open.
I added an 11" wide shelf on the curbside of the trailer. On the opposite side I decided to make a narrower 5" shelf, that would be above our heads when in bed in order that we weren't hitting it with our heads when getting in and out of bed. Unfortunately I had already sized and built the drop down flaps on the rear shelf. So, I had to curve the front edge of the latter shelf to run upto the right hand side of drop down flap to try and avoid it looking like too much of an afterthought.
Construction of these shelves is primarily 1/2" Ultralite MDF with some 3/4" thick spruce backup here and there. The edging is unstained 3/8" thick maple. On the curved shelf it's only 3/16" thick in order to get it to radius and then I glued on a 3/l6" thick backer piece to the portion that projected above the shelf to beef it up a little.
I added a small hanger rod under the 11" shelf towards the back on the curbside of the trailer. We will be leaving the bed permanently made up and so won't really need to access this back corner and we thought we might be able to hang two or three coat hangers back there if needed. I don't know if this will work but will see if I can secure whatever is on the hangers sufficiently to have them not pop off of the rod when travelling.