Many thanks to Gene Gruender on Rainbow Chaser for the original idea for this project.

This shot, looking forward in the v-berth, shows the back of the already modified anchor locker. The line “A” is where the original bulkhead forward of the v-berth was located. Since it was a non-structural flimsy piece of 3/8” plywood, I’m eliminating it altogether. The line “B” shows the outline of the original locker. You can see there was a lot of wasted space behind the v-berth locker and the anchor locker.

You can see the ledger for the bottom of the new v-berth locker that was fastened to the back of the anchor locker with Gorilla Glue and 1 ½” stainless steel screws. You can also see the blocks fastened the same way to the cabin liner (ceiling). The front of the locker will hang from these blocks.

In the Beginning

Here’s the bottom for the new locker. “A” shows how much I’m moving the front out (only six inches) but there’s quite a bit of width gained, too. Then, “B” shows how much space will be gained in the back of the locker. The space inside this new cabinet seems like it will be huge compared to the little one foot wide original locker.

Bottom

This picture has the little bulkhead added under the v-berth locker to cover the chain locker.

Chain Locker Cover

The new front of the locker with two doors cut out. This front ended up a foot or so longer than the original and I was going to make bigger doors or put the doors closer together, but at the last minute I thought the center might be a great place to put an LCD TV to watch DVDs on. So I put two openings, the original size, placed to leave as much room as possible in the center.

Front

O.K., I found an LCD TV on Ebay, bid on it and won, then used the measurements from the Ebay listing to cut the opening. (I was sure hoping the measurements were accurate.)

You can see the ledger blocks for the center shelf in the back of the locker and if you look close at the door opening on the left you can also see the shelf blocks glued inside the front panel.

TV Opening

This shows the center shelf in place. All these pieces were made by using a lot of trial and error with cardboard templates.

Center Shelf

I got the TV in the mail. The measurements were good. I made a little TV cabinet that is shown here being fitted in place in the front of the locker. The arrows show a ½” by ½” deep grove routed in the sides of the TV cabinet for a cover for the TV. I kept going back and forth in my mind, thinking there’s got to be an easier way to do this, but I really wanted a trick little roll-top door here.

TV Cabinet

Well . . . , I had a roll-top desk when I was a kid and I remembered there was some strips of wood with canvas fastened to the back, but I wasn’t really sure just how I was going to go about it. I finally remembered my dad had built a roll top desk for my mom a while back, so I called him up long distance for advice. I’m glad I did. I was going to go about it in a much different way and I think it would have ended up a mess. So, as per Dad:

I used a flat piece of plywood covered with plastic (so the glue won’t stick). Then, I fastened a piece of 1” X 6” (for a straight-edge) on one side of the board. For the wood strips of the roll-top I used screen door batten strips (they’re inexpensive and they look pretty nice. I cut them all to the correct length first, then I found a piece of canvas (I used a scrap of Sunbrella I had leftover from a previous project) and cut the it 1” shorter than the length of the wood strips. I stapled the canvas to the board ½” away from the straight-edge. Then glued the strips to the canvas, aligned against the straight edge, with contact cement. This kept ½” on each end of the wood strips without any canvas so the whole thing would slide in the tracks better.

Making the Roll-Top

This is a close up that shows the overlap clearly.

Roll-Top Close-Up

Here’s the finished product. Pretty cool huh?

Finished Roll-Top

This one shows the roll top installed in the TV cabinet.

In the Cabinet

And it even works! I used some bee’s wax on the roll-top ends and in the tracks to make it slide better.

With TV

The primary use of this locker will be cloths storage so I wanted plenty of ventilation. This is the bottom of the locker with a bunch of ¾” holes drilled in it for air circulation. I also soaked all the pieces with a clear penetrating epoxy sealer before I reassembled everything.

Holes in Bottom

In the center shelf I cut most of the plywood out, just leaving a framework, then glued 1 ½” X ¼” strips to the plywood.

More Ventilation

While I had everything apart to epoxy I cut and pasted some of the v-berth carpeting to fill in some empty spots created by the change, then glued some indoor/outdoor carpet on the new interior area.

Carpet

All the pieces are starting to come together. I originally intended to put the DVD player in the top of the locker above the TV. Making room for the roll-top above the TV took up so much space that there wasn’t enough room left. I ended up building a separate little cabinet area for the DVD player. You can see the blocks that the cabinet will fasten to at the top of the picture.

Reassembly

Here’s a close-up of the blocks. I used plenty of Gorilla Glue (my dad turned me on to that stuff to). With all the blocks that I glued to fiberglass, I screwed them in place first, then assembled everything to make sure they were in the right place. Then I marked all around the blocks, took them off and drilled dozens of 1/8” holes under where the blocks went before gluing them in place. The Gorilla Glue really foams up while it’s curing, squeezing into all the little holes making a bond that won’t come loose.

Blocks for DVD Player Cabinet

This is the box that holds the DVD player with nylon webbing to hold the unit down. It will hang from the blocks in the previous picture.

DVD Player Cabinet

I went looking for the smallest DVD player I could find. I spotted this one for sale at Radio Shack around Christmas time for only $29.95. It’s 120 volts AC so it runs off shore power if I’m at the dock of off my inverter if I’m anchored out. The TV was made for 120 volts but it has a little transformer that converts the 120 to, you guessed it, 12 volts DC. So, I just cut the cord to the transformer and wired it into my DC system. It saves the battery power lost through the inefficiency of the inverter when I’m on the hook and if I’m at the dock I just flip on my AC battery charger while I’m watching movies.

DVD Player

I’m very happy with the end results. I used the original doors for the v-berth locker. I had to remove some doors from the galley cabinets to make room for a new refrigerator box I’m putting in so I used one of those for the chain locker. My color matching didn’t come out exactly like I planned. I may strip and bleach the doors someday, but the two-tone look is actually growing on me.

I have a bunch of pictures from the anchor locker modification that I’ll post soon.

The Finished Product