RV Cabinet Repair and Refacing for Coach Interiors

What RV Cabinets Are Actually Made Of

Open a cabinet door in most coaches and look at the raw edge of the box. What you usually find is quarter inch or eighth inch plywood, sometimes hardboard, sometimes vinyl wrapped particle board on the exposed ends. The face frame is real hardwood, commonly oak, maple or alder, and that frame is doing nearly all of the structural work. Shelves are often quarter inch ply resting on dowels or stapled cleats. Doors range from solid hardwood on higher end coaches to a vinyl film wrapped over MDF on most of the rest.

Knowing which of those you have determines everything about the repair. A hardwood face frame carrying vinyl wrapped MDF doors is the most common combination we see, and it is also the best candidate for refacing, because the expensive structural part of the cabinet is already sound. A box built entirely from vinyl wrapped particle board is a different story. Once particle board takes on moisture it swells, loses fastener grip permanently, and cannot be dried back to usable condition no matter how long it sits.

We identify the construction at the estimate and put it in writing, because it changes the number substantially. Refacing a sound hardwood frame with new doors costs a fraction of what building new boxes costs. We photograph a cut edge or a drawer side and show you exactly what you are working with rather than asking you to take our word for the assessment.

• Face frames: solid oak, maple, alder or cherry, and usually still sound
• Boxes: eighth to quarter inch ply, hardboard, or vinyl wrapped particle board
• Doors: solid hardwood, hardwood frame with a ply panel, or vinyl film over MDF
• Shelves: quarter inch ply on dowels or stapled cleats, rarely edge banded
• Drawers: stapled ply boxes or plastic sided systems with a screwed on front
• Finish: a catalyzed factory sheen that ordinary primer will not bond to

Delaminating Vinyl Wrap and Sagging Shelves

Vinyl film wrapped over MDF fails predictably, and heat is the trigger. A coach closed up through a Southern California summer runs well past 120 degrees inside. The adhesive under the film softens and the wrap starts lifting at the door edges and around the routed profile first. Once air gets under it, the lifted area grows a little every hot day. You cannot glue that back with any lasting result, because the film has shrunk and no longer matches the panel it came off of.

Sagging shelves are a load and span problem, not a material defect. Quarter inch ply spanning 30 inches with canned goods on it will take a permanent bow in a single season. The fix is not simply a thicker shelf in the same opening, since that adds weight and usually will not fit the existing dado. We add a hardwood stiffener along the front edge or a center support at the back wall, which stops the sag at a fraction of the weight and often without pulling the box.

Blown out hinge screws are the third failure and by far the most common. European style cup hinges rely on two short screws biting into a bore in particle board. Road vibration works them loose, the door begins to sag, the owner tightens them, and eventually the screw strips the hole out entirely. We repair those bores with a hardwood dowel and adhesive rather than reaching for a longer screw, because a longer screw into particle board only moves the same failure a quarter inch deeper.

Repair, Reface or Replace

Repair means the boxes, frames and doors all stay and we address specific failures: rebore a hinge, stiffen a shelf, reglue a loose joint, replace a broken latch, patch a torn wrap section on a door that is otherwise fine. This is the right call when three or four things are wrong on an interior you otherwise like the look of. It is usually 3 to 10 hours of work, it keeps the coach original, and it is the least expensive path by a wide margin.

Refacing keeps the boxes and the hardwood face frames, replaces every door and drawer front, and applies matching veneer or paint to the visible frame edges. It gives you a new looking galley at roughly a third the cost of new cabinetry, and it adds almost no weight if you stay with hardwood frame doors or wrapped MDF. Refacing is the right answer when the boxes are sound but every door looks worn, which describes most coaches past their tenth year.

Full replacement is for boxes that are structurally gone: water damage in a base cabinet, particle board that has swollen at the toe kick, a layout change, or a bathroom vanity that has been wet for years. New boxes mean template work, because coach cabinets are rarely square and many sit against a curved sidewall. Expect the cost to run three to four times a reface for the same run, and expect a longer schedule because every box is built to fit one opening.

Latches, Catches and What Fails on the Road

The single most expensive cabinet failure is a latch that lets go at speed. A galley upper opens, twenty pounds of dishes come out, the door swings into its neighbor and splits a stile, and now you have a repair that started as a two dollar catch. Positive catch latches on overhead cabinets are wear items, not lifetime parts. We check every one of them on any interior job that comes through the shop, because catching that early costs almost nothing.

Magnetic catches lose grip as the strike plate wears and the magnet ages. Roller catches spread and stop holding. Push button latches on wardrobe and entertainment doors crack at the plunger. None of that is unusual and none of it is expensive to correct if it is handled during a planned job rather than discovered somewhere out on a trip. Replacing catches throughout a coach is typically 2 to 4 hours of labor plus the hardware itself.

Drawer slides are the other road failure worth naming. Coach drawers use a slide with a positive lock or a lip that has to be lifted before the drawer opens, and once that lock wears the drawer walks out on every hard stop. Full extension ball bearing slides with a locking detent are a straightforward upgrade during a reface and they solve the problem permanently. They also add weight, so we count them into the total before you authorize them.

• Positive catch latches on overhead doors are wear items, checked on every job
• Magnetic catches weaken as the strike plate wears and the magnet ages
• Push button latches crack at the plunger on wardrobe and entertainment doors
• Drawer locks wear until the drawer walks open under hard braking
• Hinge cup screws back out from vibration long before anything else fails
• Missing door bumpers let doors slam and split stiles over a few seasons

Refinishing Over Factory Sheen

Factory cabinet finish in a coach is a catalyzed conversion varnish or a precatalyzed lacquer sprayed at the plant. It is hard, it is slick, and ordinary wall primer will not bond to it. Every failed cabinet paint job we are asked to correct has the same story behind it: somebody scuffed lightly, rolled on a general purpose primer, and within a month the finish peeled off in sheets everywhere a hand or a sleeve touched it.

The process that actually works is not complicated, but no step in it can be skipped. Degrease with a solvent cleaner to lift years of cooking film and hand oil. Sand to a uniform dull scratch with 180 to 220 grit. Blow off and tack. Apply a bonding primer rated for glossy surfaces, then two thin topcoats sprayed rather than rolled, then a real cure period before doors go back on. Cure time matters more than dry time, and handling a door at four hours instead of forty eight is how print marks happen.

We spray doors and drawer fronts off the coach, laid flat, and finish the face frames in place with everything around them masked. Interior finish work is billed at the $210 per hour body and paint rate. A galley plus bedroom refinish typically runs 16 to 24 hours of labor depending on door count and how heavy the degreasing job turns out to be once we start wiping.

Cabinet Cost Math and How We Quote It

Here is a real repair job. A 28 foot trailer with four blown out hinge bores, two sagging galley shelves and one torn wrap section. Labor is 6 hours at $210 per hour, which is $1,260. Parts are twelve hinges at $14 each, a cost of $168, marked up 100 percent because each part is at or under $100, so $336. Shelf stiffener stock at $78 marks up the same way to $156. Parts total $492, sales tax at 7.75 percent adds $38.13, and the invoice lands at $1,790.13 with no deposit required.

Now a reface. A 32 foot coach, galley and bedroom, twelve doors and six drawer fronts. Labor is 18 hours at $210 per hour, which is $3,780. The doors are $145 each, a cost of $1,740, marked up 35 percent because each is over $100, so $2,349. The drawer fronts are $85 each, a cost of $510, marked up 100 percent to $1,020. Parts total $3,369 and tax at 7.75 percent adds $261.10. The invoice is $7,410.10, and a 50 percent deposit of $3,705.05 is collected at authorization and applied against it.

What moves a quote inside that range is door count first, finish choice second, and whether the boxes need work behind the faces third. A short trailer with eight doors and sound boxes sits near the bottom. A 40 foot coach with thirty openings, a painted finish that needs full degreasing and stripping, and two base cabinets with swollen particle board sits at the top or past it. We count every opening at the estimate and give you the hours line by line.

• Body and paint labor: $210 per hour, quoted in whole and half hours
• Parts at or under $100 carry a 100 percent markup
• Parts over $100 carry a 35 percent markup
• Sales tax of 7.75 percent applies to parts and materials, never to labor
• A 50 percent deposit is collected on any authorized job above $2,000
• Hinge and latch hardware is quoted per opening, not as a flat coach price