Building a Murphy Bed
A Murphy bed you ask, why a Murphy bed. And why on earth build one instead of just buying one? Those are some very good questions. Read on and I will attempt to explain my "crazy".
CONVERTING BEDROOM TO BEDROOM / HOME GYM
It all started when we decided to turn our youngest daughter’s bedroom into a home gym. She had officially moved out after college but would be back for visits. Now since I converted our guest room into my Craft room, nearly two years ago, we needed the Home gym to also serve as a bedroom. Putting in a Murphy bed, by far made the most sense. It would allow us to easily change the room from a Home Gym to a bedroom for our daughter and other family and guests in a few minutes and the room would look good either way.
FINDING A QUALITY MURPHY BED ON LIMITED BUDGET
Keeping in mind our limited budget, I began searching online for Murphy beds. I was disappointed with what I was finding. Everything I was finding was made from MDF Murphy beds that cost over $1000 or one made from hardwood for over $4000, which is only a medium density wood. If I was going to blow through such a large portion of the budget on a Murphy bed, I wanted one that wouldn’t fall apart after a few short years. After all, a Murphy bed could be very handy in a few years when we retire and downsize. I kept up the search, I was relentless. Plus, the Chicago weather was turning very cold and there wasn’t much else to do. Lol
During all my searching I was seeing all sorts of different DIY Murphy beds. After realizing buying a Murphy bed made from hardwood was going to cost more than $3000, I began to search for alternatives. I wanted our Home Gym/Guest room to look good as and functional.
OUR SOLUTION: A MURPHY BED KIT
The homemade DIY Murphy beds using assorted miscellaneous hardware didn’t make sense to us. It seemed you would save only $200 or so on hardware and your Murphy bed would end up looking a bit hap-hazard and quite difficult to handle the opening and closing of the bed. Additionally, considering the wood is the costliest part it seemed to make more sense spending that little extra upfront for the proper hardware. So, I began looking closer at using a Murphy bed kit and what exactly it should have. Here’s our "must have's":
CHOOSING THE RIGHT MURPHY BED KIT FOR US
Fortunately I found that Rockler Woodworking and Hardware had the best Murphy bed hardware. It is heavy duty and made for the intended purpose. Rockler has excellent reputation online and in the woodworking world. Bonus, they have a store here in the Chicago suburbs. If something should go wrong, we could talk face to face with someone. Always nice to have that option.
Now the question 64-thousand-dollar question, could we build a Murphy bed that looked great and worked as it should? My husband and I have some woodworking knowledge, but we would need the help of our trusted friend and neighbor on this big of a project. I looked through the FREE Rockler Murphy Bed Plans download offered on the Rockler website. They were easy to read. I was beginning to feel confident that building a nice, quality Murphy bed was very possible.
HELP WANTED; HELP REQUIRED
I would need a lot of help with this project from my husband and neighbor. It was way too much for me alone and it requires at least two people to install the Murphy bed. So, I handed my husband and our neighbor a beer, then a copy of the downloaded plans. To my surprise, they were in! They thought the project sounded like a fun challenge. Yeah, we are building a Murphy bed!!! I honestly thought I was going to have to talk them into such a big undertaking. I was really, grateful for their enthusiasm!
EVERYTHING NEEDED TO BUILD A MURPHY BED
I decided on the Rockler’s Vertical Mount Deluxe Murphy bed kit without the mattress platform. My daughter’s mattress had a nice foam topper that I wanted to keep. Choosing the option without the mattress platform allowed for the 10” I needed for mattress and topper.
The Rockler’s Vertical Mount Deluxe Murphy bed kit includes everything needed to build a Murphy bed except the wood, glue, cabinet door handles, generic screws and some nails. Check out the contents of the Murphy bed kit offered on Rockler’s website.
ADDITIONAL DETAILS TO CONSIDER
Our youngest daughter has been an avid reader for most of her life. She has accumulated a small library and we will be keeping many of the books for her for at least a couple more years. Therefore, needed to build bookcases flanking the bed too. Given the measurements of the full-size Murphy bed are approximately 60” wide x 86” tall x 16” deep it was going to take up most of the wall space. This meant it was going to overpower the wall and the room. I designed the bookcases to be shorter and slightly less deep to help they eyes move around the room a little rather than focusing on the big box in the room. I designed the bookcases to be 70 ¼” tall x 18” wide x 11 ¾” deep.
PICKING OUT HARDWARE AND TRIM
Don’t do what I did. I was so busy with other projects I hadn’t gone out and selected trim and handles before beginning. This left us having to undo the plywood for the mattress support to drill and install the front handles and then screwing it back together again. It worked out fine, but caused extra work. I chose the minted 5" center-to-center satin brass cabinet pull found out Home Depot because they were large, easy to grip and had a nice finish.
BUILDING ATTRACTIVE AND LASTING FURNITURE
The building plans call for certain pieces to made from plywood. The reason for this is that believe it or not, plywood is stronger than solid pieces of wood. Wanting our Murphy bed to be strong and look good we used a furniture grade maple plywood; it was strong, smooth and needed little sanding. We made the sides and back of the bookcases out of that same plywood, then trimmed it with a hardwood face and shelves. The rest of the wood pieces were all Poplar, which is a dense hardwood.
SUCCESS STARTS WITH PRECISE CUTTING
The cutting sheet helped minimize waste and Ensure each piece was cut precisely as needed. It took the guys a full day to just cut the wood. They took their time and ended up with only one piece being slightly off and needed to be re-cut. In retrospect, the cutting of the wood was the hardest part of the whole project. It certainly takes a level of woodworking skill to be able to make precision cuts with a table and miter saw.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Following the plan instructions to the “T” we went step by step drilling and attaching the hardware. The mattress platform and front are constructed as one piece as well as the box which frames the mattress platform. Once those pieces are built, you place them in the room where they are to be installed. The mattress platform is placed inside the box frame and then the hydraulic hinges are installed along with the stops that keep the bed from going too far in the box. Then before opening the bed you anchor the box frame to the wall prevent injury.
GIVING YOUR MURPHY BED SOME STYLE
Here comes the fun part, adding trim. I used detailed crown molding, reversed at the top. To keep the crown molding together and stabilized I added some blocks at the top to attach the trim to. The front and bottom trim was simple, offering a modern traditional look.
BUILT IN READING LIGHTS
As I mentioned, our daughter loves to read. So, I thought adding some LED reading lights in the top header box would be a great idea. I found 2 LED connecting lights that plug into any outlet and with a remote control. They were so easy to add in too!
USING THE RIGHT TYPE OF PAINT
I know, it seems wrong to stain such nice wood, but the décor of the bedroom and our house for that matter is modern traditional with a hint of farmhouse. A wall of dark wood in that room would be too overpowering. Therefore, I went with a soft, warm white Alkyd paint semi-gloss finish required 3 coats of paint with a light sanding between each coat. The color is Behr Irish mist, you can buy this paint from Home Depot.
USEFUL TIPS
Here are 10 Tips to Building a Murphy Bed that we wished we had known before we started the project.
A FINAL WORD
This was quite a big project for us, but so rewarding. It inspired our woodworking hobbyist neighbor to build a media cabinet for his basement and we now have a strong, comfortable and easy to use Murphy Bed in our home gym that really looks good.
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