I just bought a fantastic new trailer.  Typical aluminum 4-horse gooseneck with dressing room.  These are very popular.  Maybe they have a few hooks, a bar for your clothes, and a single blanket rack in the "dressing room".  That's it.  Oh yeah.  They also have a "step" that folds down so you can reach into the gooseneck area to retrieve anything you might have tossed up there and it always slides to the front out of reach.

But where can I get "optional" cabinets?  Is there anyone that builds these for horse trailers?  At the front of every car hauler you see all kinds of cool stuff, and flourescent lighting too.  I don't want a full LQ, but I need more than an empty aluminum box up front.  Help me out. 

I googled and found the following link for cabinets installed in the car hauler "racing trailers". 

http://www.allprowest.com/2Custom_Cabinets.html

Why doesn't someone do this for horse trailers?  Both at the factory, and after market?  By the way, I'd to have a "gun cabinet" too.  And the floor?  I want the tile look that I can sweep out when I have to throw a bale of hay in there.  Have you ever had to clean out a "dressing room" with astro turf after you put hay in there?

Have you ever had to clean out a "dressing room" with astro turf after you put hay in there?

Yes I have.  It was a pain in the rear!  We looked at a camper that had "tile" in it a while back.  It was a laminate like pergo but was tile instead of wood.  It snapped together and had a caulk type grout.  I saw some at lowes and was thinking of using it in my bathroom.  I think I am going to go with pergo in my newest trailer, if I ever get that far.....

Why not just use car trailer cabinets? 

Probably your best bet is to stop into any cabinet shop and have them build you a set of cabinets.

They can cut them to the exact dimensions and even the proper angles ( if you are not putting them against a straight wall). They can build them out of any kind of wood, which would include the melamines ( like the race trailers).

Another thought, that is less flexible is look at some of the garage cabinets products by rubbermaid and other companies. They come not only in wood. But in plastic, stainless steel and other metals.

http://garage-toys.com/stgastsofrsh.html

http://www.garagecabinetsonline.com/Garage-Cabinets.html

These come in standard sizes. So you might loose a or inch or two of storage because the wall falls between two cabinet sizes. ( most general cabinets for homes come in 3" increments ie 15" 18" 21" 24"). Same goes for the height and depth.  (most wall cabinets are 12" deep and base or floor cabinets are 24" deep)

Good point.  I'll contact a few.  Maybe they are unaware they have a market in the horse trailer business, especially when people are looking for alternatives to full blown LQ's.  hmmmmm.  If I were a dealer I'd be looking for local vendors who could install - these "options" would certainly set them off from the competition.

Check these guys out....lots of cool stuff:
http://pitproducts.com/diseca.html %20I actually thought about putting some in my 4ft dressing room on my stock combo but I am too cheap, you could wrap up a lot of $$$ in cabinets but it could look really cool.

One thing I still may end up doing is putting one of these on the inside of the door so that I have a nice little workstation when it's open: http://pitproducts.com/jrworkstation.html  A nice alternative to the mesh door organizers you see.

I put this in my tack room on my 3 horse:
http://www.gladiatorgarageworks.com/skip/wall_systems/geartrack__174__channels__2_pack__gawc042ppy.pro?scr=category&activeCategory=0&activeSubCategory=3
In my opinion it works much better than the standard bridle hooks because it's much more flexable, I can add whatever type of hooks at want where ever I want.

Mike

Dave -  The picture you posted shows aluminum cabinets, and they are very pricey.  The cargo trailer manufacturers that we handle offer these gorgeous cabinets in specific sizes only, most of which would be too big for your horse trailer.   You would have to have them custom made, at considerable expense.  Nice wood, custom made, would be much more affordable.

The "fold down couch" referred to by another poster is actually a fold down tire rack.  There are fold down couches, beds, etc. that are mostly used in toy haulers, and would no doubt be available from the cargo trailer industry.

We have a used trailer here right now that has cabinets in it purchased at Lowes.  They did a good job of installing them and it looks nice.  You might consider that.  Good luck.

Hi Dave, We priced out custom made cabinets for our 4' short wall trailer, but the costs were high - about $2000 for the basics, and i didn't want to spend that much. Then we went to our nearest box stores, and looked at the garage type cabinets they had for sale. Those prices were about 1/3 of the price of the custom cabinets, but i didn't like the quality of the garage cabinets - they didn't look like they'd stand up to the moving and vibrating that a horse trailer would take.

What we ended up doing was order house quality cabinets from the same box store (We used Totem, I'm not sure if that's just a Canadian box store, or if it exists in the U.S. too) We took home their pamplet on sizes and costs, spent quite a bit of time figuring out what fit in the best spots, and then ordered through them. Our total cost was about $1100 and that included more cabinets than the custom quote of $2000, and it also included our countertop.

The one problem with going with standard house size cabinets is - what to do with the funny angled piece that goes at the slant wall end? We struggled with this issue, and ended up using that space as an open closet area. We put wall and base cabinets along our long wall, which gave us enough room to hang our microwave, and have lots of other cupboards for food, dishes and our portable toilet. The cabinets ended about 20 inches from the slant wall, we simply fastened a closet rod between the slant wall and the cupboard. That space allows us to hang show clothes, coats, etc.

Our cabinets look really nice and professional. The pull-out drawers (for utentsils, etc) will slide open when traveling, though, so we use heavy duty rubber bands to fasten them to the nearest door pulls on the cabinets. Otherwise I wouldn't hesitate to do it this way again. It took my husband and I a day to assemble everything and fasten them to the walls, a much simplier job than I had imagined.

And I've seen the aluminum trailer cabinets before (my husband snowmobiles, and we've looked a the Toy Hauler trailers) and while they look great in that type of trailer I think they're too cold for my liking. Plus, aluminum is horrible to keep looking clean, every fingerprint and smudge shows. I would personally never go for that option. Plus they are very pricey.

Good luck. If you talk to Box stores I think you'll slowly get a feel for what you want and can afford.

No, it's a couch.  If you saw a tire rack then we were looking at two different pictures, or the tire rack had cushions.

You can tell that there's lots of difference in opinion on the best way to go with cabinets, and that's because everyone has different priorities, needs, budgets and goals. There's nothing wrong with going with custom cabinets, and in fact that might be your best options. But our box store cabinets are very nice, sorry if my description makes them sound half-rate and cheap. I'm going to try to see if I can post a picture to give you a better idea - never done a photo on this format before so we shall see. My main suggestion is - go what ever route you want, but there is a few options out there that will work.

 Woops on the last post...tried to PM but computer is cranky this AM.

Will try to PM again.

Kay,

A narrower and shorter version of the fold down couch in the picture is sort of what I was looking for in a post from yesterday.  I have a 4' straight wall DR so space is very limited.

If anyone has any links to sites that might have these types of fold down items listed I would appreciate it.  I would like to see the framing and mechanics and then my handy husband could make one to my specs.

I also have the Gladiator track in my trailer and love it.  Very flexible, lots of parts to accomodate pretty much everything including cabinets and shelves. It seems to be strong enough to hold up all of my stuff while going down the road.  I'm working on rigging up a removable saddle rack post that will sit on the floor and then slide into the track at the top and middle.

Teri -

I was referring to the picture of the carhauler that Dave had in his original post.  No cushions, definately a tire rack for slicks or whatever.

I was talking about the third picture on the right when you click on the link.