At 3am I had an epiphany.  Waking suddenly from a restless sleep I realized that the distortion of the drawer frame caused by the wheel wells was only near the bottom, but if I mount the drawer runners as close as possible to the top of the frame, then there’s likely to be enough room for them there.  And there was plenty of room for the drawers themselves in the frame, but the front drawer panels were cut larger and the frame distortion was preventing them sitting into the frame — but precisely because I did make them larger, I could now trim them down to accommodate the distortion.  Simples!  [Note to self: try to have more interesting dreams…]

But first things first: after a double dose of caffeine in the morning, I went to see if the boards had dried out and were still usable after being soaked in yesterday’s rain.  Well, yes and no.  There was no swelling, but there was a bit of distortion in the frame that made it difficult to insert the drawers even after I had moved the runners.  At this point my brother arrived home, and together we talked out the best solution, which was just to trim the drawers in a couple of places so that they fit correctly again.  So not exactly simples, but not too difficult either.  The end results was the drawers moving nicely again, and only a little bit less pretty than they were before (plus a lot of dusty fingerprints).  If you’re ever building something like this, my advice is definitely to use a bottom on the frame to avoid all these problems.

With all the parts now in action again, the next step was to make it all a little more inviting by covering the top of the platform with industrial indoor/outdoor carpet.  I decided to line the drawers as well, so that the contents would have some padding and friction to stop them from moving, and some protection if they did move a bit while I was driving.  I lay large strips on the drawer frame top and platform extension, used spray on adhesive to secure them, and then trimmed the edges when the adhesive dried.

For the drawer linings I cut the pieces to size first, then secured them with the spray adhesive.  Since the wind was picking up, the adhesive spray was a challenge to control and I got some on my hands, but I can now pick things up like spiderman, so that’s cool.  The overall result is rather pleasing, I think.

In the last picture you can see where the paint is now missing in some places — this is where the drawers were trimmed to fit the frame.  Before doing any final paint touch up, I wanted to refit the drawer section into the FJ to see if any more trimming was needed. But… then the rain started again, so I took a nap instead.  I’m still recovering from the jet lag, so the restless nights and long days are a bit rough at the moment.

My brother helped me out by cutting some of the remaining 1/2 in MDF up for me to use as drawer dividers, so I covered them with the carpet and installed them.

Then it was time for the final fitting… aaaannnnddd… success!!  There’s still a bit of cleaning up to do (maybe black paint wasn’t such a good idea?), and some touching up of the paint, but it’s all in, and it all works, so I’m going to call this done!  Yay!

Here you can see the hinges attaching the platform extension to the drawer frame.

All in all, not too bad for a three day build by an amateur.  Time to sit back and enjoy with another root beer!  And to start planning to hit the highway… 🙂