Fix RV Cabinet Doors That Don’t Stay Closed

We often boondock in the back country, and the roads–if you can call them that–we travel with our RVs are often a wee bit on the bumpy side. Even some of the nation’s highways can best be described as “washboard” in nature, and it’s a real discourager when you open the RV door and find your cabinet doors have popped open, snapping back and forth, damaging finishes and loosening hinges. How can you keep those RV cabinet doors shut?

For a simple fix, a new cabinet catch may be in order. We’ve tried all sorts of latches: Single roller catches (too wimpy). Double roller catches with pointed strikes (don’t work too well, and that pointed strike can really do damage if your head gets in the way of it). We finally found a catch that seems to work fairly well in a lot of applications. Called by some a “friction catch,” one popular is brand named “Bulldog Catch.” The photo shows that this catch has a tight restraining collar on the “receiver” side, and the strike is a bulbous cylinder made of resilient plastic. We’ve found the Bulldog will often work where others fail.

How do you install a cabinet catch? Fitting the “receiver” end of the catch is not to difficult. Simply mount it to the cabinet frame, typically close to the center on a vertical frame, or within an inch or so of the edge of the door, opposite the hinge when mounting on the bottom or top, on the horizontal part of the cabinet frame. But getting the striker part in the right place can make you blue in the face. Envision yourself with a tape measure, attempting to figure out just how far from the edge of the door the receiver is, and trying to allow for the “over hang” of the door from the edge of the frame. It’s the stuff nightmares are made of. There’s a much easier way.

After you’ve mounted the receiving end of the catch, use a carpenter’s pencil and thoroughly mark up the outer edge surface of the catch.  Set the catch so that it sticks out just a smidge “out” into the room.  Now firmly close the door onto the catch, and the graphite from the pencil should have left a mark on the inside of the door. Here is where the strike needs to be mounted. Re-set the receiving portion of the catch so that it is more “into” the cabinet–allowing the door to close completely and the strike to fit tight into the catch. Should you find that the graphite from the pencil doesn’t show well enough, you might try using a contrasting color chalk to mark the catch.

We did find one door that we couldn’t get any catch to work with. The clothes closet door in our “field trip” truck camper just thoroughly refuses to stay shut–and we’re not sure why. Neither one of us wants to ride around the in the back of the camper to watch it on a bumpy road.

Any rate, we finally broke down and used an old farmer’s trick. The door of the closet is fairly thick, sticking out nearly an inch from the face of the closet wall. We found a “decorative block” at the lumber yard (check in millwork supplies), stained and finished it. We screwed the deco-block into the cabinet wall, thus leaving us a surface on the face of the deco-block just about the same thickness as the closet door. We then used a simple “screen door hook and eye” to latch the cabinet shut. So far, the bumpy highways have yet to allow the closet to yawn open and closed in our travels.

Friction catch art courtesy rockler.com.  Hook and eye setup, R & T DeMaris.