Interior vinyl woodgrain wrinkling from the heat

[Ramzfan]

I just purchased an 06 Itasca Meridian 36G down in Tucson, AZ and the fake wood vinyl on some of the cabinets has wrinkled from the heat down there. Has anyone else had this problem? I am thinking that I could probably repair these areas with a lot of work and some matching vinyl, but it might be easier to just buy the new cabinet pieces from Winnebago (if they're available) and replace the ones that are bad. Any suggestions...?

[Dave & Jo's Winnie]

I would suspect that the problem is moisture not heat. My 05 Signtseer is stored outside, in Tucson, and have never seen your problem.

[Midniteoyl]

Moisture does it... Either cause they had it closed up for long periods while living in it, or it leaked..

As for repair.. you 2 best bets are: peel, sand and paint, or, peel and iron on new wood laminate and stain..

[amanda_h]

It also could be caused by just the opposite ...lack of moisture or the dryness or the absence of humidity in the desert.

We had a bit of that problem too as we spend a substantial amount of time in the desert southwest; quite a bit of that time being in one of the most arid places in the country just outside of Death Valley. When the coach was new, we'd sometimes leave it for a week or two inside an enclosed garage and even there, because of the lack of any moisture in the air, we'd see some of the vinyl pulling away from the cabinets but not to the point where it was that wrinkled to an extreme extent. I think we caught ours before it became extremely bad.

From advice we received, anytime we leave the coach unattended in the desert, we make sure we leave several 30-gallon garbage cans full of water inside so it creates a little bit of moisture in the air. It's not as good as a humidifier but I don't think it really needs to be. We've found that all that is needed is just a bit if moisture to keep the aridness of the desert climate from making glue come loose from not only the cabinet surfaces but from other stuff as well. We haven't had any problems since we are now aware of what the dryness of the desert does to cabinetry and flooring when the relative humidity is below 10% the way it is much of the time in the Mojave Desert.

But this doesn't address your problem. Yes, I suppose buying new cabinet parts is a possibility but kind of expensive, I'd imagine. We did have one area where it wrinkled a bit on one of the cabinet frames and we slit it and glued it back down and then used a bit of cabinet touch-up to blend it a bit. It isn't that noticeable and unless one examines that area really closely, I don't think they would even know. We know it's there but would anybody else? Probably not.

Good luck and let us know what you do.