Welcome to a new episode of the Tiny Apartment
Series! Today we’re gonna build the bed from the
Wall Sofa-bed system! Let’s get started! So, before we get started on the build, I’m
presenting the plan I made for the space. As you can see, the room is all but square,
which will bring more challenges as I want the furniture to adapt to the angles. I’ve already built the Kitchen and if you
haven’t seen that, make sure to check out episode 4. Now you can have an idea of what’s coming,
even if the pieces of furniture are represented pretty much by basic shapes and volumes. Let’s start to fill up this wall by constructing
the wall bed that flips over the sofa. I chose birch plywood to build most of the
furniture as it is pretty durable and high quality. Also for such a small space I thought that
a light coloured wood would be a better pick, as darker colours tend to make spaces feel
smaller than what they are. So right at the plywood dealer, I identified
each section after making some cuts in order to fit in the car. Each color corresponds to a different project
and yellow belongs to the bed. I labeled all the parts needed for this project
according to the rockler murphy bed instruction book that came with the hardware kit that
I used. I will have the building plans available for
the sofa on the next episode but not for the wall bed. Obviously it wouldn’t make sense to repeat
rockler’s plans, so I’ll post the link for the hardware kit in the description that
includes all the info and explanation videos that I also followed. I cut a bunch of plywood to size, although
I had to make a few modifications to adapt to the queen sized mattress that I’ll be
getting since mattresses dimensions vary quite a lot depending on the world’s location. Also spent some time re-writting all the dimensions
from the plans in centimetres to minimize the error as I still get confused when using
the imperial system and my rulers and most tape measures are metric anyway. To connect the frame pieces I used screws
but instead of having the heads showing up, I decided to make colourful plugs out of dyed
maple that you’ll see me using in a bit. I basically grabbed the opportunity to create
visual colourful details without compromising the minimal look of the piece and I think
that gave it a really nice twist to the original plan. I first made the holes to match the size of
the plugs and then drilled a pilot hole for the screws. After confirming the dimensions of the mattress
box, I kept following the Murphy bed plans and drilling holes to attach the hardware
components. This is a fairly simple system that consists
in a pivot point and a piston lift mechanism. To build the inner wood bed frame, it is recommended
to use solid wood, so I reclaimed some long pieces of pine that used to belong to my first
studio bed that i built back in 2012. I mentioned it on the Loft bed video, so if
you’re interested, go take a look and learn how to build a loft bed too! To continue working on this structure to place
bellow the mattress, I had to cut strips from larger boards and had a hard time doing it
because the wood had a lot tension, which made it close the kerf just right after passing
the table saw blade. I managed that by placing a wedge on the end
of the cut to force the kerf to be open. Even though I could finish the cuts, the wood
came out rather warped and tried to balance the curvatures when connecting the strips
together perpendicularly. It’s time to sand the plywood rails because
it’s easier to do it now before attaching everything together. To make sure I got everything square and aligned,
I used these Rockler corner clamping jigs that I find extremely useful. It’s very difficult for me to secure two
pieces tightly together and perpendicular when screwing and these are perfect. Rockler has been one of the greatest supporters
of this channel and the maker community in general and I’m always happy to use their
products on the videos. They always have the right tool and accessory
for the job to help us develop our woodworking projects more efficiently. So, thanks Rockler for sponsoring this video. I can now transfer the pilot holes to the
other pieces and screw the frame together. The inner section is now being assembled,
making sure the heads of the screws are flush or below the surface. The two parts can now be attached with lots
of screws. Next step is to attach the main plywood panels
and since they are going to be visible all the time, I made sure to choose the best faces
and combine the grain the best way possible. As these came from different boards, the wood
grain doesn’t match perfectly but I found out that placing a different strip of material
over the seam disguises the fact that they don’t match perfectly. I will again make a colorful detail out of
this. The bed frame needs to be attached to these
boards with a 1/4” edge clearance on three sides to reduce the gap seen from the front
when the bed it up on the wall. I can now continue working on the bed verticals
and find the correct size bits for each hole detailed in the instructions. These are the stoppers to prevent the panel
with the mattress from going too deep into the verticals. I used masking tape to have a visual reference
regarding the depth of each hole. This is one of the plates that will receive
the piston to assist raising and lowering the bed. Here I was making rainbow plywood to use as
the middle strip on the front panels. These are real wood sheets that have been
dyed in bright pigment and typically you can find them on skateboards. Pretty cool right? By the way, check out my friend Ben from Woby
Design channel that makes all kinds of amazing colorful projects using old broken skateboards. For the plugs, I made a thinner glue up of
each separate color. I handplaned one long edge and cross cut the
ends on the miter saw so I have straight and square references to pass through the table
saw. If you don’t have a zero clearance insert,
you might want to stop the cut a few centimetres from the end and flip over to continue the
cut, otherwise this could scare you. Here I’m using a plug cutter to create the
little color dots and as they come out slightly tapered, only then I realized I should be
drilling them the opposite way. Now comes a silly part that a regret to have
made with the track saw. I should have used the router with a straight
edge but for some reason in my head at the time I thought it was going to be quicker
to do with the track saw in multiple passes. The idea wasn’t that bad but turned out
that the depth wasn’t correct and had to remove quite a lot of shaving by hand with
a small shoulder plane. That was very tedious which is pretty clear
by my reactions… I could finally glue the rainbow strip in
place along with a tiny piece cut at a 45 degree angle to match the thickness of the
main panels. I used the CA and wood glue method by alternating
them every 10cm or so. This allows for a quick setup without clamps
as the CA glue will bond instantly and serve as a clamp while the wood glue dries that
provides more strength. The plugs were pressed into the holes without
glue because I wasn’t sure if the frame would need to be disassembled for some reason
and would be much easier to pop them out if they were not glued up. It should be fine anyway, these won’t be
falling off as they were super tight. Instead of applying a metal handle, I wanted
to make a recess and play a little bit with the rainbow plywood again. So I made this template and used the router
with a flush trimming bit to copy the shape into the plywood panel after removing the
bulk with a drill bit and the jigsaw. The camera battery died here so I didn’t
record the jigsaw part but you get the point. Now it’s a matter of sticking the template
with double sided tape to the work piece and route it. I also made a tiny round over to make it smoother
for the hand to grab. Since I just exposed a hole into the bed frame
structure, I decided to make a shallow box with a matching rainbow panel as a background
that will work as a recess for the handle. After some hours of sanding and refining the
edges, I could apply four coats of water based varnish to all the parts. Once it was dry, I put the metal hardware
from the murphy bed kit in place and attached the rainbow box behind the handle cutout. Now comes an important part. Because I want the bed to flip over the sofa
cushions, it needs to be raised a certain amount in order to fit. This is why I discarded the provided metal
legs that came with the murphy bed kit. When the bed is lowered, it will sit over
the sofa and over the upcoming coffee table so I don’t need extra legs and also they
wouldn’t be the correct size for this purpose anyway. So if you’re just building a regular murphy
bed, ignore this step and attach the metal legs. In my case, I needed to make this small platform
for the bed to sit over. As I had an electrical socket on this wall
area that I want to use later, I extended the wires and put a cover. This other hole doesn’t have anything on
it, but I covered it as well. Nome of this will be visible anyway. The main component weights tons and was a
bit hard to handle around but I wanted to prepare everything the best I could before
my helpers came to bring it all up on the wall. I can now attach the outer structure together
and didn’t plug these screw because they won’t be visible. It’s time to attach the headboard and oops
I was going to attach it with the finished face facing the wall. There you go. We started to lift it up and something wasn’t
quite right, so I had to disassemble a few parts and file the pivot hole a little bit
to one side in order to correct the misalignment. Also made new holes for the metal plate to
make sure it was securely attached. Now with the bed up, I snapped the gas springs
in place from behind and reattached the stoppers. The bed can now be anchored to the wall with
4 screws and it’s ready to be opened. It was extremely hard to open without the
mattress in but that is completely normal. It’s the extra weight that makes it open
and close very easily. And speaking on mattress, I’d like to thank
Colunex for providing me this amazing mattress. I’ve always neglected the quality of sleeping
products in the past and now that I’m not so young anymore and feel tired and pain everyday,
started to look after better solutions. And that’s when I found Colunex, a portuguese
company that uses premium quality materials and technologies on their products. This Revolution mattress is made in a single
piece of Xenuloc® foam that is very supportive on the body. This is the only technology produced with
water-based catalysts, being innovative and ecological. It ensures that the body weight is evenly
distributed and doesn’t become deformed over the years. It also eliminates the impact and vibration
when the person next to you is moving. All the materials used are hypoallergenic
and the removable and washable bamboo cover, combined with the semi-spheres allow air to
circulate, creating an environment free of dust mites, allergies, heat and perspiration. They have lots of different products to chose
from so make sure to visit the link in the description to know more. I’m trully impressed by my new mattress
and pillows and I still can’t believe how quickly I’ve been falling asleep during
the past month and not experiencing micro-awakenings during the night that used to be a huge problem. Thanks everyone for watching and I hope you
got some good ideas for your next project! A big shout out to all my patreon supporters
and if you want to support my work too, visit patreon.com/gethandsdirty and my online shop
where you can get some cool t-shirts, sweatshirts, handmade notebooks, stickers and more. Hit that subscribe button and follow me on
instagram to see what I’m working on next and go get your hands dirty!
