Another RV Modification Made

As any RV owner will tell you, there is always something that one finds in their RV that just doesn’t seem to be up to some standard. We have come across an issue ourselves with the recent move into our Mobile Suites.

Jo solved our closet situation for clothes that hang by purchasing hangers with a hook on the front. That front hook allows one to hang another item on a hanger on that hook. With the height of our closet, we can hang 3 of my shirts together or 3 pairs of my pants. However, what we haven’t liked with the closet has been the plastic clothes rod.

Jo did her research and finally came up with what has shown to be a good solution. So, I will devote this blog posting to the means and method of making a change to the clothes rod.

The old rod is shown here, lying on the bed in two parts, and as you can see, the uprights along the “rod” aren’t very far apart. That keeps one from being able to slide the hangers very far when looking for a particular shirt or pair of pants. Also, in that area where the two pieces join together, it was unwise to hang anything because it had a tendency to try to pull the two parts apart.

In Jo’s research, she came across the normal “shelf/hangers” found at Lowes and Home Depot. Most were too long to be useable for what we wanted, unless we were prepared to waste quite a bit of the unit. But this one proved to be closer in the size we needed.

This shelf/hanger is too long by about 3 inches and too deep by several inches. So, using a hacksaw, we cut off the 3” from one end and then cut back a bit further on part of it to allow for that part to reach back into a recessed area that is right next to some shelves in the closet.

Then, we experimented a bit at a time in cutting off from the back side of the shelf to get the length we needed to allow the front “hanger part” to attach to the same board that the old clothes rod was attached. Since most of those smaller metal parts (running front to back) are smaller in diameter than the lengthwise rods, I used a pair of “high-leverage” linesman pliers to cut each one.

After all the trimming, we ended up with a full length of 45” and 8 1/8” in depth. Doing this will also allow us to put the “hanger rod” back slight further in the closet, which will allow our clothes to fit back in better and not be brushed all the time by the sliding closet doors.

To attach the shelf/hanger to the board, we used what is called a “midget one-hole strap.” It allows one to put the hook part over the upper rod of the shelf/hanger and attach on one side of the hanger with a single screw. We placed these about every 6 inches and alternated between the “hook” of the strap going forward or backward. In other words, the screws holding them in place are opposite of each other along the rod; every other one being on the back side of the hanger.

Since the board that DRV Suites placed in the closet to attach the clothes rod to was such a good board (hardwood), we did find it necessary to drill pilot holes for each screw.  We also placed about 4 or those midget one-hole straps along the back to hold up the back part of the shelf part of the shelf/hanger.

The real advantages are that the new “clothes rod” is metal instead of plastic and that the spaces between the vertical pieces are further apart, allowing us to move the hangers further in looking for a particular item to wear.

Jo is in the closet, hard at work inserting a screw.