Folding beds

[Colin Blackburn]

We had a sofabed delivered the other week. The folding bed part was brought in separately and dropped into the "well" of the sofa and then bolted into place.

This set me thinking about using such a folding mechanism in another location in the house. We have a built-in window-seat-cum-storage-box which at the moment stores a rolled futon mattress and some bedding. What it would be nice to do would be to build a folding bed mechanism into this box.

So, does anyone know where I can get just the folding bed part of a sofabed or a similar type of thing? I can imagine that the box-seat might have to be adapted. It would certainly need supports added to hold the bed and it may need extending in one direction. Has anyone fitted such beds in such a way? Or, has anyone built folding beds to their own plans?

Colin

[Bob Mannix]

By far the easiest would be to get a cheap second hand sofa bed, take the bits you want out and chuck the rest. Most sofa-beds will get dumped because the sofa part has got all manky and will have had little bed use (IMHO). You should be able to source a replacement mattress.

[David W.E. Roberts]

Nice idea. I would guess that most manufactureres of sofa beds just build the sofa and buy in the bed mechanism. Have you tried Google?

Cheers Dave R

[N. Thornton]

I got an idea... I wonder if it'd work.

A 6' bed folded into 4 makes 1 1/2 feet, so... if you made a base (simplest is using a sheets of chip/ply), and saw it into 4, each bit

1.5 feet long, then hinge the 4 together. Now, to put the bed away you roll it up to become a 1.5 ft x 1.5 ft x 3 ft boc shape - just like you have there.

Stained ply would look much nicer of course.

Now, we need lots of legs on the base so its sits well when unfolded: I can imagine how to do that, but describe it? I'd put the legs in with it folded so everythings staggered to all roll up together.

Think that would run? I'd have to build one to know, but it looks good in my head.

Regards, NT