So what to do with the day, that was our big question this morning, given that we were a day a head of schedule. The answer turned out to be spend almost the entire day in a Home Depot parking lot doing some repairs to the camper cabinets. Over the last week or so we have been like the walking wounded so today seemed like an opportune day to fix some things.

For about 2 weeks now one of the shelves in the cabinet above the refrigerator has been supported by a roll of electrical tap sitting on top of the upper drawer, courtesy of a failed metal bracket and (1/2") screw. We took the opportunity to raise the offending shelf about 1/2" so that our bottles of salad dressing could be stored in the drawer immediately below that shelf. The fix was to remove the flimsy metal brackets and their (totally inadequate) 1/2" screws and support the shelf on two pieces of 3/4" x 2" x 18" timber. On one side the support is fixed to the cabinet wall by five 3/4" screws that go all the way through the cabinet wall (the outside of that wall is not visible) and on the other side (where the outside of the wall IS visible) the support is secured by 5 1/2" screws and glue.

We also took the opportunity to strengthen the supports of the upper shelf in that same cabinet. This shelf was only supported by those small metal pegs that one uses in household furniture where the shelf height is adjustable. For the support of this shelf we chose 1.5" x 1.5" aluminum angle with the same fastening as on the lower shelf.

The second item to be fixed was the top drawer in the set of drawers beside the refrigerator. This has been a problematic drawer from the start (actually they all have) - problematic in the sense that they often fail to stay closed when rounding turns. At our last visit to GXV a spacer was placed under the plastic "strike plate" that the latch catches onto. Well about a week ago that plastic strike plate pulled loose (pulling out four 1/2inch screws in the process) and since then we have placed that drawer on the bed whenever we were under way. After closer inspection I diagnosed the problem as simply incorrect positioning of the latch. The latch is too low on the drawer face to effectively "catch" the plastic strike plate in the cabinet. Since the latch in the drawer face cannot be repositioned (it sits in a hole in the drawer front) and padding the strike plate with a spacer has already failed another solution was called for - a new more sturdy (non-plastic) strike plate. So I set about making a new strike plate out of a 6" piece of 1" x 1" aluminum angle with the aid of a file, an angle grinder and a wooden stool. The pictures above show the result. It took a lot of trial and error to get the size and shape correct but it seems to work. And because this new strike plate is 6" wide there is a lot of space for any number of screws. This solution will set the pattern for similar treatment for all other drawers.