Kitchen Drawer Repair

After our drive to Mesa, we encountered a couple of issues.  First the missing refrigerator vent went missing.  My theory is that it flew off the side of the motor home (a mile outside of the campground when we hit a pot hole on an overpass before we even got to I-10 and the freeway.

Never the less, I was mulling over my most recent lesson-learned

(check out the problem you just fixed 

as in give it a test run.  Or in my case 

after I set the latches, I should have tugged on them 

to make sure the vent was secure)

We got situated at our site and all set up.  Jacks down, slides out, water and electricity hooked up, sewer hose out and checked.

Inside, Pam had rearranged furniture, put out the rugs, moved things from their travel position in the shower, hooked up the bedroom TV which lies facedown on the bed in the travel mode, etc.

Then when she tried to open the top drawer.  It opened slightly but something was getting caught inside.  There was no moving it more than a couple of inches either way.  Being the strong guy that I am, I gave it a good tug.

It worked the drawer open.  Sort of.  The end and sides of the drawer came apart from the back and the top drawer collapsed into the second drawer.  Oh man... 

I really didn't have much choice--it wasn't going to open any other way and we needed to be able to get into it.  Now we had another project on our hands.  

I removed the pieces of the drawer and then we found a Costco bag for temporary storage of the contents of the broken drawer.

Once we did that, Pam started working on the drawer while I found some cardboard to cut out a temporary vent cover which I wrote about yesterday.

Pam got some needle nose pliers and pulled out the brad nails.

Then we looked at the sides of the drawer that were split (from the brad nails) and put it all back together with wood glue and some clamps.

We waited a day for it all to dry and had to do some trimming and shimming

to make the drawer fit squarely into the slide rails drawer thingys.

And Pam put in her dividers before she moved things back into the drawer.

After a little while - all fixed!

One of the design changes we made was to remove the back latch that is on all the drawers in the coach.  It was on the back of the drawer.  Without the latch, we will have to secure it for travel by duct tape or some velcro or something.

For now it is fixed and functional and will last us until the summer when we are back in Red Bay.  At that time, we will have Chris Berry make new drawers for all our current kitchen drawer.  This time with real wood and not particle board.

We are happy with the way it turned out and will move on to the next project.

Thanks for joining us on the Roadrunner Chronicles!  Until next time...