Beam me up, Scotty!: Reduce, Recycle, Reuse!

As an old friend of mine recently surrendered his long-held title of the "King of Scrounge" to me, I feel I should continue to demonstrate my highly-developed recycling skills. Today was a beautiful day and so I made good use of it. I have been pondering how to store the bed platform under the gaucho. Suddenly, the 25-watt bulb bulb flickered over my head and I knew how I was going to pull off my plan. First, let's review the situation....

When the bed is put away it should look like this...

...and when the bed is out it will look like this...

...and I need it to store in here without a lot of ruckus.

I noted that the longerons (that's fancy airplane design talk for ribs running lengthwise) are in just the right place to support some sort of glides to store the bed platform. I guess I could have bought some aluminum but since funding is limited I had to come up with suitable angle material. I looked over my supply of stuff in the corner of the garage and I found the solution! I knew I had saved this for a reason!

These stiffeners came from some packaging....and will work well here.

Cut to length and some door stop moulding to beef up the installation. Where does this get us?

Glued and clamped...

...on both sides...

...let's get the air compressor fired up...

...and just like that, problem solved!

I need to pick up some recessed pull rings to raise the gaucho platform and drawbolts to secure it open but the following series of photos shows how well my solution tuned out:

Putting the bed platform away is now as easy as ONE...

...TWO...

...THREE!!

Close the lid and it's stowed away

A view from underneath showing how it all nests neatly

I felt so good after this that I spent the remainder of the day wrestling materials to close in the under-gaucho storage area. I plan on using the area directly aft of the wheelwells for more industrial stuff (leveling jacks, chocks, shore power cords, etc.) and so to keep the "outdoor" items separate from the "indoor" stuff, some dividers were needed.

First some additional strengthening of the gaucho support across the back

Recycling leftover luan helps keep the budget down

After things are settled under the gaucho (read glued dried and dust settled) I'll seal up the wood with a nice coat of exterior paint like all the rest of the wood. At some point I should work on getting my vinyl cut and laid. I know many folks put down the vinyl before anything goes down but in order to maximize my $20 remnant, I'll be installing it later.....but soon. I want to get it done; it'll definitely make a difference! My next dilemma is to find a solution of how to have an adequate dinette table and still be able to get seated past the galley cabinet. This required some time for quiet reflection...and with some help from the cricket in the side yard (he needs to invite his friends - I love crickets!) I think I have come up with just the plan.