3051S Pantry Upgrades

[trwmodela]

I decided to rebuild my pantry into a sliding unit. After some thought a five shelve designed was planned. Four pairs of slides with a load of 100 pounds each were used. There are two 1/2" plywood panels that were mounted to the interior walls with the slides in place. My cabinet maker built the unit in his shop.

Using sterile brand containers of various sizes helped to maximize the space. The top two shelves are spaced for canned and bottled goods. The front door panel was removed and mounted on the face of the unit.

Tim
Fort Myers, FL

[rockin'ray]

Awesome idea. My wife and I just bought a much bigger trailer last fall that has a pantry in it. It has only one shelf in the middle but most of the space is pretty much wasted. We bought a plastic drawer unit to put in there to better use some of the space but I think this is a much better idea. I am going to start working on this next weekend when we get back out to our trailer. It is on a seasonal spot so i cannot work on it at home.

[trwmodela]

Sterilite Containers are the brand used for this pantry.

Tim

[bclemens]

turned out great. We stopped using the wire basket pull out shelves because it wasted so much space. This would certainly work well.

[Wiscampsin]

Great looking mod!!

[trwmodela]

The only negative I see to this design is the adding of some addition weight. I designed the shelves to hold as much as possible. I did see the wire basket shelving in a 24 footer brochure.

Tim

[grega]

Nice work!

[cundie11]

Looks great!

[2SGMRET]

Any plans available to follow so I could do the same? Looks outstanding!!

[trwmodela]

It was built by a custom cabinet maker that has a shop in the same complex as mine. The four pair of slides are rated at 100 pounds each. First he mounted part of the slide to 1/2 plywood panels. These panels are almost the full size of the side walls. (see photos) They just fit through the door opening and we attached them to the walls using small screws. Walt placed two pieces of 1/2 plywood under the panels at the bottom the raise them to the door opening. The shelves, right & left sides and front rail are also 1/2" plywood. The back panel is maybe 1/8" sheeting.

I came up with a five shelve design using Sterilite containers that lock in place when stacked. The bottom two shelves are spaced at 15", the third shelve is 12", the forth is 8" and the top is just under 8". The top two shelves are designed for canned goods.

I can tell you Walt built the unit to tight specs. He has a lock to install this weekend to hold it shut during travel.

Sorry, no plans at this time.

Tim

[bclemens]

trwmodela.

We're listening. I just witnessed the prototype back in our R&D department. I had forwarded your mod over to engineering. It took them a while to get to it, but I just saw the working model. Once we cost it, it may become standard.

Of course we had to make a few modifications to get around your patent...but looks pretty much the same. Great idea. If we end up using it I'll tool around and see if I can find you a hat or something.

[trwmodela]

Interesting, I did the design and layout. The shelving height dimensions were determined by spacing Sterilite containers. The top two shelves I wanted for cans or smaller items. Walt my cabinet maker built the unit by hand one Saturday morning. We used a standard drawer lock with key to keep it in place during travel.

[bclemens]

We've got some 100lbs soft closing, self latching drawer guides designed for RV's that we're testing out with it.

[trwmodela]

We used 100lb rated drawer slides too. Maybe a few adjustable shelves would be an idea for thought. My spacing was designed around the containers with some room for adjustments by varying different heights and widths. This provides some flexibility without having adjustable shelves.

Walt did not understand my need for locking the unit closed at first. But, soon realized and came up the drawer lock an after thought.

[bclemens]

Adjustable shelves would be nice...just not a real good way to do it without adding a full height backer (instead of being able to get to stuff from both sides)

We used to use the pull out wire shelves, but it just wasted so much space.

[trwmodela]

The 3051S has a full wall next to the pantry. So access can only be from one side.

[ATVer]

Great idea and I hope it ends up in production. Only thing is put the smaller shelves for canned goods at the bottom. One should always put heavier items low to keep the center of gravity as low as possible to maximize coach stability while on the road.

[bgilly]

This is a great idea but I would make one note (from experience). Since the items are stacked (including the sterilite containers), if a object on the top of any stack on any one of the shelves shifts towards the refrigerator it could become a chock - preventing the pantry slide from opening as the object is wedge behind the stile of the millwork.

We had this happen with a can product in our pantry. When the pantry slid closed I heard the can sort of drop and naturally it was near the front and wedge against another can so we couldn't open the slide much at all. There was no "crawl space" or reach room but luckily we had enough room to fit a hand in and pull items one at a time until the offending can was reached.
We went to using small bungee cords hooked to little cup hooks running front to back of the shelf verticals. I don't know how well that will work in a bouncing RV.

Bobby

[trwmodela]

The back of my sliding pantry has a full wall. There is very little room for an item to shift on the open side when closed because of the plywood panels that hold the shelve slides in place. Also, there is no lip at the door frame opening to stop the pantry from sliding out.

[trwmodela]

The back of my sliding pantry has a full wall. There is very little room for an item to shift on the open side when closed because of the plywood panels (see pic 2) that hold the shelve slides in place. Also, there is no lip at the door frame opening to stop the pantry from sliding out. It was built with tight specifications by a professional cabinet maker.