Ok, I'll admit it, I like to think/plan/dream about things that are a long way off, but anyway...
I've been thinking about what I want to build on the family "farm" in a few years, as the current house on it should just be leveled and started over from scratch. (* - see below for more rambling about this...)
I plan on building a house with the number of bedrooms I expect to actually be used, by then hopefully I'll know how many kids rooms will be necessary. I hate the thought of an exclusive guest bedroom as it seems to be a very inefficient use of space considering how little use they typically get. So, my present thought to deal with that problem is to build a murphy bed in the middle of 2 built in bookshelves and use the room primarily as a den/library. But, it would give guests a private room, and I'm assuming that a murphy bed would be much more comfortable then a pull-out sofa. Plus, murphy beds are pretty uncommon and would give the room that unique "cool!" feeling. Maybe?
Anyway, my question is, "Am I overlooking something?" Are there any pitfalls or cautions I need to be aware of with regards to a murphy bed?
*OT rambling about the current house. It's been there forever, and is in pretty good condition. However, it's grown over the years, and redoing the room layout would be a real pain or impossible because of load-bearing walls in awkward locations, etc. The sills in the basement have quite a bow in them now, all of the electrical needs to be updated, etc etc etc. I think, and my father agrees, that it would be best just to level it and start over. However, what I'd like to do in order to preserve some sense of history, is to save a lot of the framing materials etc and use that wood for built-in projects for the new house. That way I could at least say "Well, that bookcase there was one of 150 year old sills from the original house."