We purchased our 2016 R-178 last spring and just love it.  The floor plan works perfect and there’s plenty of room for us and friends or grand kids.  A number of members of the forum have commented that interior storage space in the 178 is at a premium.  That is an absolute fact.  Over the past year we’ve poured through this forum and copied numerous mods from other’s experience in order to use the space as efficiently as possible.

Well, on our last trip my wife commented on how little usable space there actually is with the entertainment center.  I think crappy was the word she used.  You know, that skinny cabinet that takes up space but only provides about 3 1/2” of usable depth.  Well, looking at it I realized that on the 178 the entertainment center attaches to an outside wall of over 9” wide.  Hey, that’s space that’s going to waste.

So, the final mod I made before buttoning up the pod for the winter was a new, deeper, entertainment center.

So here it is with a larger top I made.  What the heck, I got gutsy, took a chance and removed the original cabinet to see how it was made.  I knew that could always put it back.  The removal was pretty straight forward though you have to search carefully for all of the screws holding it in place.  The hardest part during removal was twisting the electrical panel out of the cabinet opening.

I sketched up some plans and used clear pine and pocket screws for the face frames of the new cabinet.  Since I couldn’t find 1/8” plywood locally I opted for ¼” birch plywood for the panels and shelving.

 The actual construction was pretty straightforward.  I just copied the original cabinet’s dimensions and construction methods.  The only changes made were to accommodate the deeper shelves and adjusting some dimensions to for the thicker plywood.

Here’s a couple of pictures of dry fitting the new cabinet in place to make sure everything fits together properly and to check the size and shape.  I decided early during the planning to make the new cabinet in two pieces.  The lower section holding the electrical panel is a direct copy of the original.  Because of the rats nest of wires and cables inside there wasn’t any way to gain any additional usable space by making it deeper.  Also, removing the panel for electrical work from a deeper cabinet was going to be difficult at best so it just made sense to keep it the same.

The new shelving section is now about 8” deep and will screw onto the base and into the walls.

The whole cabinet was screwed together with pocket screws.  This made it easy to disassemble the individual pieces for sanding, staining and finishing.  I had a stain custom mixed at Sherwim-Williams to match the faux woodwork.  Finishing was with a clear polyurethane spray.  This step was pretty labor intensive took quite a bit of time to complete. 

 Once the finishing was complete I re-assembled it with the screws and attached it to the walls in the pod exactly like the original installation.  I made the new top slightly deeper than the cabinet with a raised edge trim to keep small items from rolling off.

This was a relatively fun mod to do and I like the way it turned out.  Hope this gives some of the 178 owners an idea of how to gain some more space.  

In hind sight this mod could have been done much differently.  The lower section of the original cabinet could be cut off and reused as a base for a new cabinet/shelf.  Then a cabinet, maybe with doors and adjustable shelves could be made to sit on it.  Or, just an open set of shelves.  The television can be moved up on the wall for even more usable space.

This past winter I was standing in our 178 and got curious about how much space the microwave actually took up in the cabinet.  So on a lark I took it out figuring I could always put it back in if necessary.  Holy smokes I couldn’t believe the amount of additional storage space that was available if we took out the microwave completely.  We don’t use the microwave that much and it weighs nearly 50 pounds.  That’s just too much unnecessary weight to heat up a cup of coffee and make popcorn.  So we decided to re-purpose the cabinet for storage and purchase an inexpensive light weight toaster oven to replace it.

I lined the inside of the cabinet with 1/8 thick hardboard and made a removable box around the exposed electrical wires and outlets.

Then I finished off the inside with a small shelf and a slide out tray for our food and cooking supplies.

We had a rather warm spell this past winter and with entirely too much time on my hands I finished of the cabinet with a tambour door.

Last summer I built a cabinet above the kitchen area and fastened it to the molding at the top of the slide out.  Great idea for additional space but a really lousy design.  It just wasn’t deep enough to be of any use.

So I took it out and built another one the full 75” length of the upper molding and 13” deep.  The height at 7 ¾” is enough to give clearance with the AC unit and the curvature of the ceiling in the rear of the 178 when the slide out moves in and out.

Lastly, one design feature about the 178 we find irritating is the placement of radio.  It’s up near the ceiling and it’s impossible to see the LCD display clearly in any level of light without something to stand on. 

So I removed the radio and the entire cabinet and built a new deeper cabinet using the original as a model. 

Rerouted the rat’s nest of wires through new lower openings in the wall.  Mounting the radio at eye level and the switches and tank level indicators closer together created another nice sized storage area above.

I covered the original hole in the wall with the drawer bottoms I saved after making new deeper and taller drawers.