Bunkhouse Shelf
If you read our earlier post Camper Guts you likely saw that our girl’s formerly camo bunkhouse had an ugly and bowing shelf between the upper bunks. We removed it when we painted the walls and almost 6 months later have finally gotten around to installing a new shelf.
We started out with a 3/4″ piece of sanded plywood and cut it into two pieces. A base piece measuring 16″ by 32″ and a second lip piece measuring 3″ by 30.5″.
We made cuts using a 50″ Bora Clamp Edge Saw Guide and our Ryobi P505 18v Circular Saw. We strongly recommend using the larger P108 Battery packs, with the extra power they cut so much easier!
Living in the city with no garage leaves us with very little work space and camper room. Hopefully we will soon find a new home one day with room to really spread out.
After pre-drilling the two pieces in their final positions we glued the edge piece to the shelf base using Titebond III wood glue.
We clamped the base and lip pieces together to help the gluing process and added three 2-1/2 Spax screws along the edge.
We love Elmers color changing wood filler to fill the seams and screw holes. Goes on purple, dries natural when it’s done.
A few hours later we gave the shelf a quick sanding with some 220 grit sand paper on our Ryobi orbital sander (we have the older version). The router is already packed for our move, and I was too lazy to do a proper round-over, so I just hit all the edges using our mouse sanding pad. It’s amazing and lets you use the same sand paper from your orbital sander. (Pictured below.)
Test fit with clamps before painting and screwing it into place
Test mounted with screws.
It was painted with two coats of a Behr paint and primer in one, gloss paint. The same finishing paint used the in the rest of the camper. Unlike the rest of the camper I skipped the oil based primer. It didn’t feel necessary when covering raw plywood vs the camper wallpaper.
Our girls are very happy to have a place to keep their phones, water bottles, and glasses while they sleep.
