Cabinetry and Countertops

Cabinetry is where an RV interior visibly ages, and it is also where the mobile-versus-residential distinction bites hardest.

Cabinets in a house are static. Cabinets in a vehicle are being shaken continuously and shock-loaded at every expansion joint. They fail at their fastenings, at their hinges, at their latches and at their joints, which is a completely different failure profile from residential cabinetry and calls for different solutions.

Refacing usually beats replacing

The carcases in most coaches outlive their finishes by a wide margin. Doors delaminate, veneer lifts, finishes yellow and hardware wears out long before the boxes themselves fail.

Refacing addresses all the visible ageing while keeping sound structure. That matters for three reasons: it costs a fraction of new cabinetry, it adds no weight, and it avoids disturbing the plumbing and wiring that is routed behind and frequently through the existing boxes.

We assess carcases before recommending anything. Where they are sound, refacing is the honest recommendation even though it is the smaller job.

What we do

Repair. Water damage, impact damage, failed joints, torn-out hinges and latches, delaminated panels.

Refacing. New doors and drawer fronts, new hardware, exposed surfaces refinished or reskinned.

Custom builds. Complete new cabinetry to a new design, built for the vehicle and its weight budget.

Modification. Converting a wardrobe to shelving, adding a workspace, reconfiguring a galley, building storage into dead space.

Hardware upgrade. Positive latches, soft-close where appropriate, drawer slides rated for the loads and the movement.

Countertops. Replacement, repair and custom fabrication.

Materials, honestly

Carcases. Lightweight ply is the standard for good reason. Particle board and MDF are cheaper and they swell irreversibly when wet, which in a vehicle is a matter of when rather than if.

Doors and fronts. Solid hardwood frames with panel infills look excellent and are heavy. Veneered ply is lighter and nearly as good if the veneer is properly sealed at the edges, which is where it fails.

Countertops. Solid surface is the default: light, seamless, repairable, tolerant of flex. Laminate is lighter and cheapest. Quartz and granite are beautiful, heavy enough to matter on payload, and brittle enough to crack when the structure flexes. We will fit stone where a customer wants it, with proper substrate support, and we will be clear about the trade first.

Fastening and latching

This is what separates cabinetry that survives from cabinetry that does not.

Mechanical fastening into structure, not into wall panelling. Adhesive and fasteners together rather than either alone. Hinges rated for repeated shock rather than residential hinges. Positive latches on every door and drawer, because friction catches release on a rough road and a door that swings open at speed will break its own hinge or damage whatever is opposite it.

Drawer slides need to be rated for vehicle use and fitted with a positive detent. A drawer that launches on braking is dangerous as well as annoying.

What it costs

Labor is $210 per hour. See the pricing page. Custom cabinetry lead time is usually the constraint rather than fitting.

When the cabinet is not the problem

A cabinet that is wet, mouldy or pulling away from the wall is usually reporting a problem behind it rather than a problem with itself. Water tracks down inside a wall and the cabinet mounted to that wall is simply the first thing you can see.

We check what is behind before quoting cabinet work in those cases, because rebuilding a cabinet onto wet framing is an expensive way to hide a water damage problem for another year.

Countertops in a vehicle that flexes

A countertop in a house spans between fixed points. A countertop in a coach spans between two parts of a structure that move independently as the vehicle twists, which is why stone cracks in RVs and why it usually cracks at a sink or cooktop cutout where the material is already narrowest.

The fix is substrate rather than material. A continuous supported substrate under the full span, mechanical isolation at the ends so the top is not rigidly captured, and generous radii at every internal corner of a cutout, because a square internal corner is a crack initiator. Get all three right and stone is workable. Get any of them wrong and the material will find the weakness within a year of driving.

Solid surface avoids most of this by being able to flex slightly and by being repairable when it does chip, which is the main reason it remains the default in coaches despite stone being more fashionable.

Seams matter too. A solid surface top can be seamed almost invisibly and the seam is as strong as the sheet. Laminate seams are visible and they are the first place water gets into the substrate, which is why laminate in a galley wants as few seams as the layout allows.

Hardware is not a detail

The single most common complaint after a cabinetry job is noise. Doors that tap, drawers that rattle, hinges that creak over every joint in the road surface.

That is almost always hardware rather than construction. Soft-close hinges eliminate door tap. Positive-detent slides stop drawer rattle. Bumpers on every closing face kill the remaining noise. None of it costs much and all of it is the difference between an interior that is pleasant to travel in and one that is quietly irritating for as long as you own the vehicle.

Estimates are $150 and credited back against an authorized repair.