It’s been a long time since I’ve updated this website. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I’ve been working so hard on the bus build itself. Now I have an Instagram page that is getting some decent traction, so people have been asking for more content. I’m currently sitting on about 15 videos worth of content, so I am going to be trying to play catch-up while I have the time.

On that note, let’s talk about the upper cabinets. I wanted my cabinets to be as sturdy as possible. So, I installed them straight to the ribs of the bus and used way more hardware than necessary to hang them. I used 3/4 inch plywood as the vertical walls of the cabinet carcass for maximum rigidity. Everything was built in place, and kind of freestyled as I went.

Here’s a video of how I did it:

I was lucky enough to score some free metal L-brackets from my local Buy Nothing group, so I went to town with them.

The hardest part was getting the structure up there, but once that was done, it was just a matter of filling in the skeleton with the finishes for the cabinet. On the bottom, I cut some rectangular pieces of plywood to the size of the base, then simply dropped them into place. It was not exactly level, but since the bus is not necessarily sitting level, that’s fine. In fact, the slope of the base went towards the outside wall of the bus, so if anything, it will help keep things from falling out or putting pressure on the cabinet fronts.

After the cabinets were up, I had to put some thought into the vent for the stove. I don’t want carbon monoxide, grease, and condensation from the stove to accumulate in the bus, so having a hood vent was important to me.

This was a frustrating project, but I got through it and was ultimately happy that I went through the effort.

Although it was tedious, getting it hung was the easy part. The hard part was lining up the duct to the outside so the fan can exhaust. Of course, as I was working on it, I ran out of daylight and had to rush the last parts of it. I also started panicking because right around that time I figured out that the curve of the roof was going to make mounting the vent cover flush with the roof impossible. The only way I could make it work was to mount it with a massive gap at the top that was basically just asking for water to flood into the interior of the bus. That wouldn’t do, so I quickly whipped up a piece of flashing that would prevent water from penetrating at the vent. That and some quickly applied expanding spray foam created a decent seal that has so far stood the test of time. At some point I intend to bodo the edges to look a little more attractive, but for now, it does what it needs to do.

It’s good to have a hood vent and upper cabinet storage.