Working Out Details
Things are moving right along with the Sportsmobilebuild. Over the past couple of weeks we’ve received phone calls from Jonathan to resolve issues about the bulkhead cabinetry. On the one hand, they’re excited about being able to do some custom cabinetry work, on the other hand, the project rarely proceeds exactly as planned. Fortunately, since I work from home, I’m nearly always available and all it takes is an e-mail with a photograph and a few minutes on the phone and an “issue” is resolved.
The first call involved a number of issues with the rear cabinet. They had made some progress and wanted to check in on a few things before they moved too far forward.
You can start to see the overall organization of that reararea - the main lower central area for our camera bags, the two small cubicles to the right for our tripods, an upper shelf, and the mudroom to the left. The main design change that circumstances dictated were the elimination of a small shelf accessible from the rear of the vehicle, due in large part to the need for larger speaker boxes than I had allowed for in my original design. We lost 3 inches from that and so the shelf is about 2” taller than we’d thought it would be.
The phone call issue involved a support to the right side of the small access door, access to the mud room and how to deal with the central access panel. If you recall, we’d planned on using a mesh over the entire central panel.
In the end, we decided to go with three doors across the top part of the cabinetry, and will still have the mesh access panel on the lower half of the cabinet. A lot of different considerations went into that decision, but in the end we think it will look great and provide a bit more of a physical separation between the bulkhead and the living area.
A few days later I received a phone call at the exact same time an e-mail popped into my inbox.
“Hi Jonathan, I bet you’re going to ask what we think about having the speakers placed at an angle like in the photograph?” He laughed and said, “Yes, that’s exactly my question.” After discussing things a bit (they were just going to replace the panels with ones two inches wider) he mentioned that it was one of the speaker guys who said, why don’t we ask them what they like, this looks kinda cool!
So while I was talking to Jonathan, I sent the photo to Ann at work and asked her thoughts via e-mail. I got an immediate response and was able to give the OK to Jonathan on the spot. The big advantage of the angled speakers is we gain 4 inches more storage space laterally for that shelf, which is accessible from the inside living area of the vehicle. Add that to the fact that the shelf is taller than we’d anticipated, and much deeper (I’d not really though about the fact that it was going to be 20 inches deep when I drew it out), it’s going to be a valuable storage space for such a small vehicle.
It’s amazing how quickly little questions like this can get resolved with today’s technology. For us, that means the build continues without any substantial delays and that means we can pick it up sooner rather than later!