Ever since our first trip away in the Bongo, I’ve wondered if I could come up with a compromise kitchen pod. I needed the eventual solution to be the best possible compromise of work space, storage, portability and space saving. Was it even possible? Well, it took me most of the two years I’ve owned the Bongo, plotting and scheming, trying to come up with something that would tick the boxes, AND be something I could build with my limited woodworking skills! Take a look, and see if you think I pulled it off!
Anyone who has read earlier posts here will know my normal position on cooking when camping – avoid it at all costs! Both my better half and myself are content to “break our fast” on a cuppa or two and, for example, a muffin, or a few biscuits. Then, we would set off and on our travels find ourselves a cafe or snack wagon for a filled roll, or sit in for a nice cooked breakfast. It’s nice to treat yourself when out and about, doesn’t cost that much (less than a tenner a head), and it helps local business. A win all round! Oh, and most important…. no washing up! We also use the wide range of dehydrated expedition meals available for an easy evening meal. Costing around a fiver a meal, they are very tasty, filling and balanced nutritionally, as they were designed for keeping the Armed Forces and expeditions going. These just need boiling water added, and you eat them straight out the packet – you can see the no washing up theme here too!
So, for the majority of the time, all we need is hot water, cups, kettle, tea, coffee, sugar, powdered milk etc. Additionally, when on campsites we use an electric hookup to provide mains electricity, allowing for an electric kettle and small convector heater to be used, so we don’t even unpack the gas stove. When on these campsites, I use a plastic filing box, which holds our kitchen bits n bobs, as a little shelf for the kettle and cups. This box sits perfectly, if a little unsteadily, on the Dickie seat behind the driver’s seat, leaving the floor clear. This means that when using the rock n roll bed, with the table folded up out the way, the kitchen area can be used by whoever gets up first in the morning. It works, but being me, I wanted something that worked better than a filing box. More work surface. More storage. And, perhaps somewhere for the water container and portable fridge to live? Could it be done and still leave the floor clear?
Well, maybe…..
So, after a pre-lockdown trip on my own into the Galloway Forest, I reckoned I had an idea. If I replaced the Dickie seat with a removable shelf of some kind, it would be stable enough to rest a small unit on. My plan was to build a support, attach it to the mounts where the Dickie seat bolts in. Then make a shelf with a “lip” that would tuck behind this support, and wedge under the rear edge of the driver’s seat. This would ensure it couldn’t tip off, but wouldn’t need any fasteners. Simple! Well, it wasn’t THAT simple, not for me, anyway! After a couple of prototypes, I had a solution….
The pod itself wouldn’t be straightforward either. I wanted it to hold the water container we used, and my little fridge, as well as having storage equivalent to the kitchen box we would leave behind. It would have to fit between the engine tunnel and the side of the van, and lastly had to fit while travelling on the floor, under the height of the table. This would take some frustrating measuring and head scratching! I decided that as I only had one sheet of the finished material available, and that I didn’t trust myself to build this thing first time, I would buy some MDF sheet to use and build a prototype. That way, if it needed “tweaking”, it wouldn’t mean scrapping my precious board. This was a waterproof, Paxoline-type material, the same stuff I had used for the table, so it would match nicely if I pulled this off. Better to build twice than scrap my good material!
Much cutting and measuring, screwing and glueing later, I had something that actually worked! I was feeling quite smug now, this was working out nicely. I also had the measurements of the final “working” prototype to use on my finished article.
I set to work on the next dry weekend,
I had bought some new thicker MDF to use for the internals of the pod, glued everything together for strength, and, assembling from the top downward allowed for the fitting of the fridge supports to hold it in place. I next worked out how to use the plastic tote tray I had repurposed as a drawer under neath. I fitted some stops to keep it in place when in transit, then carefully fitted a drawer front made of my grey board, complete with handle, I test assembled everything, then carefully masked off and painted all the MDF grey to match the finished board sides, top and drawer front. Once dry, I completed assembly with the fridge in place, and tried it in place in the van….
I’m happy with the finished article, and after our Island Hopper trip, we found the pod a pretty good compromise between having an actual kitchen unit, plus keeping as much floor as possible, and being able to use our fabulous full width rock n roll bed as before. It sits nicely under the table in transit, meaning we can jump in the back and sit as before too when out and about. Everything we normally kept in that kitchen box stores in the drawer I made underneath the fridge, so we have saved a bit of space there too, plus the water container can live in the pod too, making a bit more space on the rear shelf for our luggage. True, it is a bit of a lift up onto the support shelf, as the unit is pretty chunky / heavy, but it is a once a day lift, and I can live with it for the advantage of having a nice usable kitchen space. I can still sit on the end of the bed with my feet on the floor too, which was a prerequisite of the design.
So, it turned out easy enough – it only took two years, dozens of hours of staring at the available space, many hours of cutting, and throwing away, trial pieces to build a working prototype, and the nerve-racking one-time-only cutting of my precious, irreplacable board in the finishing stages…. But, hopefully it will serve for years to come and make living in the small space inside Ali Bongo just a wee bit more comfortable.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you are inspired to have a go at adapting your Bongo living space to better suit your requirements!
Ali Bongo's adventures 