One of the improvements we've completed

Miss Doozie has a residential refrigerator - french doors at the top and freezer at the bottom. When going around some corners, the doors and/or drawer can come open, and things can fall out - not great. When we got the bus, the previous owner had child latches that he had put onto the doors to keep them closed when traveling. They worked well, but eventually came un-stuck and we needed to find a different solution.

For a while, we used a clamp to hold the french doors closed, and a belt to hold the freezer closed. That worked ok too, but was rather unsightly. We knew other RVers had implemented different solutions and were sure we could implement one too.

When we were in Casper at the solar eclipse rally last August, one of our friends showed us their solution:

He had gotten a nylon handle ...

Used one of the screw holes that hold the french doors onto the refrigerator...

 

Turn the handle to secure.

Another friend had created a device that goes between the doors and the drawer:

It is made from a simple Walmart cutting board...

These were the plans he posted on Facebook.

The finished device in place...

Painted to add a "pop" of color!

Felt included on the inside to keep from rubbing on the freezer drawer.

Also works as an iPad stand...

Voila! a colorful iPad stand!

We decided to go with the handles that could be turned - they would always be in place and would not migrate to other parts of the bus when not in place! When we were in Mesa in March, we found some handles but when we brought them back to the bus, the part that needed to go between the doors and the drawer was too big around and we were going to have to machine it down. We stopped at a local independent hardware store (to get some of the nuts and bolts that we needed for the solar panel project) and asked a lady there. She asked us for more specifics on what we were doing, and suggested using a handle for a pull cord on a lawn mower! There were replacements for sale (at a significantly cheaper price than the handle that we had previously purchased!) - and the diameter of the part that goes between the doors was just right! And... it had a large hole within the handle where the bolt could be sunk down inside the handle!

In place - if you look back up at the top at our friend's installation - he had a nut on the outside - our bolt head is buried inside the head of the pull.

Closed position - ready for travel.

Attachment inside the refrigerator - the bolt is still holding the door onto the refrigerator there so no compromise on the integrity of the door of the refrigerator.

Dwayne got this task finished a few months ago - I realized I had never let our readers know about it - an inexpensive but elegant fix to our problem. No "pop" of color as Daniel and Lynda have, but we're very pleased with it!