GMC Motorhome, Building of cabinets

I needed to title the post something for the web guys…. these are some thoughts on interior building of these things:

Just so we are on even ground, I can’t know each one of you so lets just lay out my understanding and you can make whatever decision you like on my concept:

My family was raised in the fine wood working business… ,y Grandad was a finish worker for Bryhill.  Sharped saw blades for 30 years after they made him retire.  I live in a Florida :cracker” house with tongue and groove all wall and a clear pine floor….. I love wood and I love to make it pretty.  Not as nuts as some on wood that I know…. Andy .. you are woodman… none the less I loe woodworking…. getting dust covered, sweating and loving every minute of it…. That’s me, happy posing in front of the screw Abyss..

 Oh yeah… my point…  point here being is if you are even remotely into wood you understand there are many level of refinement and amount of time put into a piece.  If it’s fine furniture you do this  but if you do that in this project the labor cost would be astronomical , as a retirement labor of love some wood folk have done amazing things but asked they will admit they put way more hours into the project than was effective.  That’s great and I love to see what some do but the reality of this is its a motorhome… while very unique and custom from stem to stern still, it’s just not realistic to have jointed cabinets and all that… what you need is the ability to custom fit cabinets that don’t take forever to cut… fit…. finish and install one board at a time….. hey and lemme tell you this is where the rubber meats the road.  The RV industry cannot connect the dots with their manufacturing process to produce a machine that is comfortable to drive and live in and maintain without dropping so much money that it makes it unfun anymore!

This project brought to us from Nancy & Willie is going into a “knockdown” cabinet, prefinished and ready to bolt together like that record rack you built way back.  Using this building form exact patterns will end up being made but this is our prototype build.  I will be putting far more labor into these fixtures than I’ll bill….. together we may have interior options for all of you out there.

Taking an interior to bare…. commonly called “gutting the critter” can be a very expensive proposition…. electrical and plumbing infrastructure for sure but mainly the building of the interior cabinets.  Labor is the costliest part of anything like this… I’m not looking to charge more for finite custom services… I prefer to believe a quality designed knockdown prefinished cabinet is the way to go here.  More time and energy into the materials can make for less labor cost……..  let’s see:

Here is both the galley and drawer cabinet basic shapes   Completed, there should be few to no visible fastners, the finish will be a vacuum formed hard plastic finish on all sides of the panels.  When we get the panels turned into files, our manufacturing labor cost…

OK, the day is on, I have a new interior guy shadowing me today… man, this is a good thing!  Need to go… see ya tomorrow……

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