We had all kinds of ambitious winter plans for our Boler renovation and modernization. Not a single one happened, instead we completed a few renovations in our house and generally just hid from winter.
But, it’s spring. And, now it’s finally nice out again.
Which of course means its bolering season!
Before we hit the road to enjoy another summer filled with hiking, fishing, hotdogs cooked over the campfire and smores, we decided to do a few more modern upgrades in our Boler.
First up, closet shelving and new cupboard doors.
On the Victoria Day long weekend we managed to spend a solid day working on our Boler.
We easily finished the shelving in the closet. And, we’ve done a tonne of work on building new cupboard fronts.
Today, I’ll share the closet shelving. (The cupboard fronts will wait until they are finished – hopefully next weekend).
When we bought our Boler the closet was an empty space.
Last summer camping it was my pet-peeve because we simply stacked things in it and hoped that they didn’t fall out on us when we opened the door.
In deciding to tackle the shelving we made a few simple decisions to direct the project.
First, the closet shelving could not damage the existing fiberglass closet exterior more than absolutely necessary. So, G designed a closet system that only required 4 screws through the fiberglass.
Second, the closet interior has to be functional, not fancy. Virtually no-one other than G and I will see the inside of the closet, so we really didn’t need it to be fancy. We decided to use affordable materials that would also be durable. We talked about fancier woods like oak and maple, but ultimately went with the ever practical plywood and pine. The shelves are made of one-side sanded plywood. And the side supports are made of two inch, 3/4inch thick pine boards. Both of which are easy to get at Home Depot/Rona.
Third, the shelves have to be spaced appropriately to fit Tupperware containers we already own, as I did not want to waste something we already have. I love things to be organized and I think having things sorted into Tupperware will help us keep the Boler organized while we are traveling. And well G may not have cared deeply about this shelf building criteria, he did humor me.
So, we got to work measuring and cutting. (Okay, G got to work. I sat on the couch in the Boler and took photos of the progress). In all honesty, working inside a tiny closet is a one person job so my help wasn’t really required and was actually more of a pain in the butt.
Once the vertical side supports were screwed in place, we screwed in horizontal pieces of pine to create supports for the plywood shelves.
And then, we cut the plywood shelves. Due to the egg shape of the Boler each shelf is a different size, but with accurate measuring and a couple of extra cuts we made everything fit snugly.
Then we screwed the boards down to make sure they don’t move while we are driving.
We often find that working in the Boler can be challenging due to the egg shape, but ultimately because we focused on functionality the shelves were pretty darn easy to install, which made both of us happy!
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And, now that I’m thinking of our Boler again, I realized that I wasted multiple winter months and fell behind on this blog. I had intended to share about our adventures last summer in redoing the plumbing and gas line inside our Boler. And, I also wanted to share about our really awesome exterior rejuvenation. I still have the photos from our work last summer, which means I just need to set some time aside to write about all of these things. Honestly, I’ve procrastinated away the winter because writing about plumbing and gas lines is not my idea of fun. But, I still plan to do it and hope to do it really soon as I really want to spend our summer outside enjoying the Boler, not writing about it!
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Our Boler Adventures 