VW mods - Closet changes
The default closet from Winnebago was not very useful. The sliding doors and seat
belt were constantly in the way, and there were no shelves, making it awkward to
store clothes.
I removed the sliding doors and seat belt, installed two shelves, and ran elastic
string in front of them to keep the clothes from sliding out. Yes, I lost some privacy
because my unmentionables are there for all the world to see, but it's so much more
convenient and easy to use, it's an easy tradeoff.
Installation
I started by removing the sliding doors, which easily come out by lifting them up
and out. Then I unbolted the upper mount for the seat belt that partially blocks
the closet. I let the seat belt retract and the remainder stays out of the way below
the closet.
For the shelves, I used the same 1/4" particle board coated with vinyl on one side
that I used for the bonus shelf and the
quickie table. Since the back wall of the closet is curved, each shelf has
a different depth. The top shelf is 19" wide by 11 1/4" deep. The bottom shelf is
19" wide by 14" deep.
The shelves are mounted in place by simple shelf brackets bought from the hardware
store.
The elastic string stretches to about twice it's length, and it works extremely
well as a device for holding the clothes in the shelves while allowing easy access.
Although it looks like two strings, it is actually a single piece that is threaded
through two holes in the bottom closet rail at it's midway point. Each end is then
pulled up and tied to a custom hook made from a wire clothes hanger. The hook then
slips through a hole in the top closet rail. This arrangement allows us to remove
the hooks whenever we want the string completely out of the way, although in reality
the string is so unobtrusive we rarely remove it. Usually, we just stretch the string
out of the way while we access the closet.
I also screwed in four eyehooks - two for each shelf - into the edge of the shelves
to contain the string, preventing the string from stretching too far when the clothes
try to slide out as I drive around corners. Before I screwed them in, I used a pliers
to slightly bend open each eye so that the string can be removed if desired.
The end result is that if I want the string to be out of the way, I remove the two
hooks from the top, pull out the string from the eyehooks, and allow the string
to rest on the bottom. As I mentioned above, I rarely go this far since the strings
are so easy to work around.
