My Spring Project: bed + platform

Introduction:

I am living in a small one room apartment (plus very small kitchen, corridor and bathroom) so I need to optimally use the existing space. Since I’m working from home a lot of the time one of the most important things is my working space: a desk, computer and storage for supplies and filing. The other really important thing is my bed with a size of 140 x 200 cm (about 55 x 78 inch) – working all day makes me tired.

So the question is – what can I do to combine these two and use the existing space most efficiently?

Ideas: 

Brainstorming with a friend resulted in really creative ideas. Add some alcoholic beverage[1] and the ideas get even more creative. We thought of everything up to hydraulic solutions where we decided to look for a lifting platform from an old garage ;-).

Anyway – getting back to reality the only real solution seemed to be a loft bed with the working space below. But with a room height of 260 cm (102 inch) minus my size of 185 cm (72,8 inch) minus girder minus mattress minus slatted frame only a few centimeters would’ve been left. I had to decide wriggling into the bed or hitting my head when standing up from the desk. I didn’t like both alternatives.

The solution: 

The final idea then was to make the bed vanish over the day, but since I am not a magician this seemed to be difficult. But there was a solution for this: store the bed under a working platform when not in use. This would save some centimeters in height and allow me to roll the bed out of it’s garage.

I’ve done some planning in Sketchup a while ago which resulted in the following prototype sketch.

 

The platform height in this plan is about 60 cm (23,6 inch). The area of the top is about 2 x 2,15 m (29 x 85 inch) which leaves enough room for a desk, a chair, some shelves and of course me. To not waste space I’ve also added the shelf on the left which could be used as magazine archive or for some folders, etc. The bed needs to be on some kind of wheels to allow moving it in and out of course. I decided to go for six heavy duty wheels – you never know how much those need to -uhm- handle.

The two problems:

First: Time… I guess the project itself could be done in a few days – not really a long term project. In fact the bed exists already for some months now and most of the time spent went into painting the MDF. But I somehow was not able to find me the time needed to build the platform yet.

Second: Money… As with most projects money is the limiting factor. I was able to reduce the costs by not using planed timbers(?) since you can not see those anyway. However the wood, paint, rolls, some carpet, etc add to a few hundred bucks (see me avoiding to to convert from Euro to Dollar? ;).

Conclusion: 

Posting this to curbly might kill two birds with one stone:

First by adding some pressue to finally find a time slot and start building the platform.

And second to earn some money in Amazon credits (can they be used on amazon.de too?) which would allow me to buy some books even if I spend all my money on the project. 🙂

 

[1] I just need to note that I don’t drink any alcohol, but my friend does. But that is a completely different story.