Murphy Bed with IKEA Cabinets
Murphy Bed Ikea? My wife and I decided to re-do our guest room. We wanted our guests to have a comfortable Queen-size bed, and use the floor space for other activities. The solution… a Murphy Bed (folding wall bed). After a lot of research, we decided to purchase a free-standing Murphy Bed Frame. The frame features welded steel construction, simple spring mechanism, and moves independent of the cabinet. The other option, a Murphy Panel Bed, is more expensive and requires attachment to a factory-made cabinet. The frame and cabinet essentially become one mechanism.
To build our own cabinets, we turned first to IKEA furniture. The quality is very good, relatively inexpensive, and there are many accessories to choose from. Just by coincidence, I found a wonderful blog (Herbie’s World) that detailed construction using a Murphy Bed Frame and IKEA cabinets. Exactly what we were looking for. Herbie’s blog and photos convinced us the idea would really work. Murphy Bed Ikea? Thanks Herbie!
The design is based on standard IKEA PAX wardrobe cabinets. The cabinets are tall enough to enclose the Murphy Bed in the vertical position. However, to accommodate the width of a Queen-size bed (65" clearance), top and toe-kick panels are fabricated to extend a standard cabinet (1-door wide) to a “quadruple-wide” cabinet (4-doors wide); using stock Birkeland doors. That’s essentially the build. My fabrication follows Herbie’s design, except I strengthened the top panel. We wanted the center cabinet to support boxes (cloths, comforters, books, etc.).