With the front interior complete, it is time to turn to the rear area over our feet. This area is basically wasted volume. Instead, large open cabinets will give us a place to store our clothes and other bulky items. Think of these as the his-and-hers closets of the teardrop.

Installed the Counter Top

The first step in creating the rear cabinets was to build the upper rear bulkhead. It is another torsion panel constructed of a 3/4″ plywood frame covered in 1/4″ plywood on both sides. The galley counter top sits on top of the lower rear bulkhead and passed forward as the bottom of the interior cabinets.

For wait reasons, the counter top is made from 1/3″ plywood. Eventually, dividers will support it below. Without the dividers, it has considerable flex in it.

Interior Framing

The interior volume is divided into 2 left to right by a vertical wall. The top of this wall basically floats since the interior roof will go on later and is 1/8″ plywood. Before getting to far I drilled shelf pin holes.

The face frame itself is 2″ poplar, you guessed it, assembled with pocket hole screws. The bottom and top rails have dados cut in them to accept a 3/16″ thick tenon on the doors. The upper tracks have deeper dados than lower track. By carefully setting the height of doors themselves, they can be lifted in an out. We can have closed cabinets, or open shelves, or a combination of the two. Using sliding doors zero’s out the volume needed to open the cabinets.

Getting the doors to fit just right required some trial and error. I started with them a little oversized vertically and cut them back until they fit. Once I had the size right, I wrapped the vertical edges with veneer banding and drilled a central hole as a light zero clearance alternative to a traditional pull. It also matches the front cabinets.