Bed Building Shenanigans

With both Thomas and me being such large people, we knew we needed our bed to be as big as possible and sturdy enough to hold us. We were aiming for a king sized bed which is pretty difficult with the limited space we were working with. We had to finish the walls before we could take final measurements and see exactly how much mattress we could shove in there. It turned out we would have to trim six inches off the width of a king sized mattress, but we wouldn’t have to sacrifice any length.

I had found a thorough YouTube tutorial for creating a convertible bed inside a van using a single piece of plywood. It seemed like the ideal design for saving space and it seemed like a project Thomas and I could accomplish despite being very new to any kind of woodworking. We used a circular saw and a jigsaw to cut the wood and meticulously sanded the shapes so they would slide and fit together. Then, we attached angle iron to the walls and used square tubing for the frame and legs of the bed. It took hours of finagling to attach the plywood to the square tubing properly so it would still slide, but we got there in the end.

This project turned out to be a spectacular waste of time for us. It should have been obvious to us much sooner, but plywood alone was not strong enough to hold us Bergs. Moments after the photo above of Thomas sitting on the bed, it splintered and broke. We had wasted much time and materials pursuing this method, but at least we established the concept was possible.

We had to take the leap of faith and shell out for more materials, stronger ones. We hoped 2″x4″s in place of the plywood would be a solution to our problem. It took another couple hours of finagling. Without the strict structure we had in the cutouts, it was hard to get the planks to line up correctly. Once again, however, we got there in the end, and it worked perfectly!

We got a tri-fold king mattress and cut down each section so it would fit properly between our walls. The tri-fold is ideal for allowing us to transform the bed into a couch. I wouldn’t say it is easy, necessarily, since it cannot be done by one person alone, but the transformation is very quick for a team to accomplish. A king sized fitted sheet and a queen sized comforter fit perfectly on our customized mattress and finish off our comfy convertible bed. I actually prefer it to our bed at home!