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Wardrobe cubby house

I've done several renos this week with the role up to Christmas for peoples spare rooms and all of them have been dumping grounds and looked unused since last Christmas. But all three people were persistant on keeping them as a permanant spare room. This made me come home and think about ours.

Queen Bed - Waste of floor space

Built in robe - no clothes hanging, dumping ground

So the past couple of days it got a BIG make over.

Spare Roome/PLAY ROOM

Ward Robe Before

Room Before, afre clearing bed and side tables

Robe converted into two story play house

Queen Bed mounted on the Wall, Murphy Bed, with and activity wall on the base

Floor space now clear for games and crazy play and room usuable 100% of the time.

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Jason

Love this @woodalwaysworks, great work. The kids must absolutely love it.

We had a few similar conversions on Workshop last year about spare rooms:

Poll: What do you use your spare room for?

Do you have a junk room?

Thanks for sharing.

Jason

Isobel

Love the wardrobe conversion into a two storey cubby house. That's so clever @woodalwaysworks!

MartyH

I hadn't heard the term Murphy bed before. They are a great idea for a spare room though.

woodalwaysworks

Finally a picture with the bed down. Couple of straps added to hold the mattress in place when the bed is lifted up.

BIM_Engineer

@Jason Murphy beds have to be fixed/mounted properly, have safe guard locking and have counter balances as the beds/frames can weigh +100kgs
otherwise it may be an accident waiting to happen
@woodalwaysworks I would be interested in which mechanisms you used?
The hardware mechanisms should be something Bunnings could stock/handle

woodalwaysworks

@BIM_Engineer These beds aren't very popular in Australia and what there is over here is very limited so your ability to go unique is quite difficult. This doesn't mean safety needs to be comprimised though. Just stick with the key elements which you know and put them into practice.
LOCKS. most beds use a standard lock or catch. With mine been in a play room i used a 10mm steel Eyelet bolt which passess through the frame and bed once upand screws into a T-Nut on the inside.

Counter Balancing the bed. Your right, the bed is very heavy, not quite a 100kg but i could think of a few guests that i wouldn't want lowering it and putting it away on their own. So i installed 4 air pistons at the back, 2 would have been suffice but with me installing the bed horizontal i thought it better to spread the load more evenly. Getting the pressure on these just right was very tedious work, just so the bed could be lowered slowly and easily but then didn't have too much resistance to but away. Pistons over springs, I thought they'd be easy to install.

Lowering Mechanism - Swivel plate. 250mm square, 250kg vertical load bear, 175kg horizontal. Fitted with 4 M8 bolts either side. Finding a plate with the iternal moving spcae to capcitate the bolt head was the hardest thing, and something i didn't think of until i came to fit the first ones i bought, back to the buying board. Positing of the plates was also very important because i wanting the bottom of the bed to be 250mm off the ground, this helped the design fit into the 400mm box frame i had designed.

BIM_Engineer

@woodalwaysworks
Great job and description you might want to consider (Site) linking in the hardware items & if possible I would love to see a rough sketch.. OT not sure if you have ever used Sketchup for woodworking ? cheers

Sasha1

Great use of space guys well done!!!

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