Vanagon Westy Rear Closet Modification
By Frank Condelli
The pictures below document the modifications I’ve recently made to the rear closet on my 1987 Vanagon Westfalia. This modification makes better use of the space that was previously accessed by the small door behind the rear table. Now with two shelves, sliding doors and cut original door the space is more useful and easily accessible when the rear space behind the rear bench seat is full of luggage. The project took two days to complete and cost approximately $50 in materials including paint which was mixed to match the original grey colour.
The sliding doors were made from 1/8″ fiberboard. The track is white plastic sliding door channel available from Home Depot. It is made specifically for this application. You can see small pieces if it on the shelf in one of the pics below. The top channel is deeper than the bottom to allow the door to be cut shorter so that it can be raised in the upper channel to allow insertion and removal. The track was mounted with small nails to the edge of the closet fascia board. The opening was cut along the original lines of the existing rear opening, leaving the same space between the front edge and corner as the rear had, 2-1/2″ if I remember correctly. The side edges were trimmed with the edge trim removed from the rear closet opening, starting & stopping with the ends of the door channels. The top and bottom channels were trim covered with a strip of wood trim molding. The two doors must be equal in width or 1/2 the width of the opening plus 1″ ~ 2″ overlap.
