Walnut Murphy Bed

[jhigby]

I built this queen size murphy bed for my sister to go into her 1920's house. My primary design concept was to trick the eyes to make you believe it's an old armoire that had mission/shaker influence.

The really nice part of this project was that my sister was paying the bill (fairly unrestrained) so I had real freedom to add touches that weren't at all functional. For example - door & drawer handles, door hinges and even the crown molding. For me the whole trick was about concealing the outside edge where the murphy bed drops from the main frame that's attached to the wall. The fake door hinges really help there.

I also used a commercial version of murphy bed hardware that included a metal tube frame along with heavy duty mounting hardware/springs. It wasn't cheap ($700?) but I didn't want to have to worry about any slop/racking which allowed me to minimize the gaps around the edge.

The whole fake front (solid walnut) was attached to 1/4" walnut plywood (stained to match the front) which was then attached to the metal bed frame.

Finish: 1 coat of orange shellac (brings out the warmth of the brown in the walnut) followed by 2 coats of satin/semi lacquer.

[Vic]

Nice, Jon. A murphy is on my horizon, too. Still haven't done much sketching on it yet. Too many things I really want to build, but this is a honey do...so will probably be done before my fun projects.

[rmac]

That really is nice, Jon. I wonder how long until somebody does something similar that has a (real) flat screen TV instead of your faux armoire doors.

-- Russ