DIY Murphy Bed...the inexpensive solution

Due to the size of our house, we needed the second bedroom to function as an occasional guest bedroom / office / many other things. So the only logical solution was a Murphy Bed.

After looking at the prices and options available this seem like a good opportunity to start a new custom project.

I found a Murphy Bed hardware kit on Ebay labeled:
"Economy Do-It-Yourself Murphy Bed Hardware Kit" sold by some nice folks (i'm assuming they're nice folks because they are from Canada) at Murphy Wall Beds Hardware. The kit was only $259 at the time, unfortunately it looks like they no longer sell them on eBay. It looks like the may still sell them on their website for abour $389.  There may be other kits out there for cheaper, but I can't vouch for their quality.  I would say the hardware I received seemed like good quality stuff and it still functions fine one year on. The rest of the Murphy Bed I built with lumber from my local big box home improvement store.

I didn't really have any helpers and I don't have a huge workshop, so I made do with what I had. With a little engineering my motorcycle ties acted as extra hands to help keep things square as I put together the frame.

Making adjustments to the amount of springs in each side was probably one of the hardest parts of this project. Eventually I rigged up another engineering feat with the motorcycle ties to help get springs in and out of each mechanism.  These things are seriously tight and will put an eye out if you're not careful.  They have some videos on their Youtube channel. If you watch the videos you'll think "Hey that girl can do it, it looks pretty easy!".  And you will be very wrong.

There were many trips in and out of the house and it was a lot of fun trying to get my relatively square frame to work in a house that has walls and floors that are anything but.

One of many fittings

I used a lot of shims to try and get all of the faux door spacings to look even. If i did this again I might think about using something other than a solid 1 x 12 (or whatever the width was) because no matter how straight that board is there is nothing to keep the center from bowing in or out. You could add some screws in the wall and try to keep the side straight, but then you would have some brackets or something that would be exposed when the bed is down.  I might have run a little 1x2 on the face of the sides to help keep the front straight.  Oh well it's straight enough now, we'll see how it is in a few years.

Once I started painting the piece, the wife decided she wanted to paint the faux doors of the Murphy Bed with that chalk paint that everyone seems to be crazy about.  The family stopped by and everyone contributed a little chalk to test out the chalkboard paint.

The nearly finished product

We even got an Artist's rendering of an Artist's rendering of a Boxer

I'll post some pictures of the fully finished product soon...

How to create a Dutch Door from an old wood door

photo credit: http://www.countryliving.com

My lovely wife decided she must have a Dutch Door. Possibly after seeing images such as the adjacent image in various magazines. Of course the door had to be old because "They just don't make them the same anymore". Which is true, but older doors come with their own set of issues.

So wifey found a wooden door at a vintage shop downtown. Unfortunately this door had around 8 - 10 layers of paint.  I left the wife to handle the paint stripping and she purchased this paint stripper and began to go to work on the Dutch Door...gradually. Over the course of about 6 months.

This was a project that wouldn't go away so I decided to step in, after all it was taking up room in my shed. Instead of the paint stripper that seemed ton only take off one coat at a time, I went after the door with ceramic sanding belts like this.

Then the paint really started to fly! The only real problem was getting into all of the crevasses, which had to be done by hand, and I didn't really have the patience to do a perfect job with the hand sanding. A bit out of character for me, but I just wanted this Dutch Door project done. After cutting the door in half I made a ledge for the bottom half and added some custom corbels. Here is a shot of the work in progress.

After sanding the door down to a paintable finish, I decided to try out my air spayer. This sprayer in combination with my tiny compressor turned out to be an exercise in frustration. So lesson learned, if you want to use an air sprayer, you're going to need a big boy compressor that can keep up.  The idea was to get some nice smooth coats with the sprayer and then maybe do a final coat with the brush. But the spray coats seemed to be enough, at least for now.

I'll post some updated pictures soon.