Ron's Top 10 Mods

[Ron in BC]

Ron's Top 10 Mods: Under bed storage crates


I have countless mods and a lot of them were on a computer that was destroyed. Most of them are scattered over several other computers. Often when trying to answer a question and post a photo to illustrate the answer I have to go searching for photos. So I've decided to wade through things and put them all in one place.

So I also decided that I'd start with the ones that I consider well worth the effort to do. At least, they work for me.

I'm coming to the conclusion that many of the mods are a draw, hard to rate one above the other. But the under bed crate storage has to be the hands down #1.

There's different ways to do this mod. This is my way.

I looked at using both 3 and 4 crates. I came to the conclusion that I preferred 4 because the total length worked well and I'd rather have 4 separate bins.

The crates are held together with zap straps. At first I was leery of using them because I didn't think that they'd stay tight considering that the long crate assembly is lifted from only one end. They've been just fine.

I made a protective sill because the hot and cold water lines run along the wall and also because the crate drawer slides over the sill.

I put casters on the rear crate. The usage action is lift up slightly and slide the drawer out, either slightly rubbing on the sill or not.

I installed two guide rails. They are actually on a slight angle because if you pulled the drawer straight out all the way it'd hit the side of the closet area. This way you don't have to steer it, it automatically clears.

At the rear I installed a stop block. This positions the front so it has room to drop slightly behind the front sill. The result is that in transit no matter how rough the road the crates are effectively locked in and can't shift positions.

So we have shoe storage by the bathroom, a built-in electric heater on the diagonal, great multi-bin storage and a separate storage area accessed from the exterior hatch.

All-in-all I think it's a pretty good use of the area.

Ron