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I planned for three drawers in my build: small, medium, and large. The small drawer is for small electronic gadgets and charging cords and such, the middle sized drawer is for kitchen plates and misc toiletries that couldn't fit in my toiletry storage.
The large drawer was designed to hold kitchen appliances like the Instant Pot and electric kettle, and a saucepan and skillet.
One thing I learned is that DIY drawers are HARD!
Every part of the drawer has to be perfectly aligned with square 90 degree angles, which is a big challenge for a first-timer. You can buy pre-made drawers that will fit inside your frame, and that's what I ended up doing. I built my frame out of baltic birch plywood and bought custom-sized drawer boxes and sliders from The Cabinet Door Store. (Note: their products are good quality, but they are not fast! It took about two months to arrive.)
The drawer boxes can be purchased pre-assembled or assembled, and I went with the cheaper option (pre-assembled). When they arrived in pieces I turned them over to my woodworking handyman Jeff because he's better at that sort of thing than I am. He assembled them, but when I asked if he could install the drawer slides, he demurred, saying it was too challenging, which did not inspire confidence in my ability to pull it off. But I did it, with a lot of measuring and trial and error. Eventually.
One mistake I made was securing the frame of the drawers in my vehicle prior to installing the drawers and slides. And because the left side is up against a wall, this created an additional challenge with securing the left side of the slides to the drawer. I ended up spending a lot of time contorted in awkward positions, which you may have noted in this video from the previous Kitchen section:
van build kitchen area.mp4
I also cut, painted and attached the drawer fronts. With that said, the drawers stick sometimes. And the bottom drawer, which has heavy kitchen appliances, tends to fly open on sharp turns, so I had to rig up this makeshift strap (left) to hold it shut while moving.
I had some problems with all of the drawer fronts not being aligned just right, so I had to play around with sanding them down to make sure they would open smoothly. So I made a lot of mistakes, but in the end I'm moderately pleased with my drawers.
Parts & tools:
Baltic Birch Cabinet Drawer Boxes & slides, including shipping - $353
Baltic birch plywood drawer fronts
Paint
Drawer tabs
19.5" x 19.5" foam cushion with custom blue fabric cover and velcro no-slip option - $70
Total cost = $431 and counting
I spent too much money on this because I replaced the bottom drawer.
Early tests
Lining it up with the bed divider
It wasn't perfectly square. But close.
On my first version I installed the shore power electrical fuse box and the Samlex battery charger behind the bottom drawer.
Securing the drawers in place after the vinyl flooring install
After some test travels with v.1 of the van I realized that one of my main mistakes was making certain things, like the fuse box, too inaccessible.
Here you can see on v.1 of the bottom drawer, I had to cut down the back of the bottom drawer to be able to reach the fuse box.
When I started working on v.2 I decided to move the fuse box to the top of the drawer where it would be more easily accessible. I also scrapped the Samlex since it really wasn't needed.
The purpose of the Samlex is to recharge your in-house batteries using shore power. I didn't need to use it at all on my early test runs and I realized that it was not worth the space it was taking up in my van. My in-house batteries are recharged by the sun and also by turning on the vehicle (the alternator recharges my in-house batteries). Anytime I am parked in a location like an RV park with power access, I can run anything I need off my shore power outlet, so there's really no need for the Samlex.
On v.2 I scrapped the Samlex which meant that I could add another 6" or so of depth to my bottom drawer. This adds more space for kitchen appliances like a Nutribullet and electric kettle.
I also upgraded the door handles from these to these which I had left over from a home renovation. (This template makes them super easy to install.)
Swapping out my oddly sized original drawer (in the front) for a deeper, shorter version (in the back). This also meant replacing the drawer front, which was previously attached using Titebond wood glue (that's the leftover residue you see) and three screws.
Once the drawers were finally done I ordered a square foam cushion with custom blue fabric cover to turn it into an optional seat. The Etsy seller will add velcro on the bottom as an option to make sure it stays in place.
Here's the seat cover and you stuff the foam cushion inside. (They arrived separately.)
The upgraded location of the fuse box and power outlet/charging station in v.2, which I talked about in the Solar & Electrical section.
Now that I have things organized in the kitchen, let's move onto the "office." I knew it was very important to have a comfortable Desk in my van so I could get some work done on the road.
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