What do you know about them? Does anyone have a particularly good plan, or website that has good plans?
Shipping a complete unit isn’t an option as I live in Alaska. And I have a queen sized mattress soooo… I’d like to find a good design and build my own.
All ideas and opinions welcomed!
I’ve heard they’re preferred over couches by Irish psychiatrists.
Heh…
I can’t tell you where to get one or how to build one, but I have a story to share.
So…my uncle and father are screwing around one day, getting drunk. They’re in their underwear and my uncle decides he wants to know what if feels like to be folded up in the Murphy bed. So, my dad is standing there, in his underwear, holding uncle up in the wall. At that moment, my aunt comes home with a friend from work. My dad, embarrassed, runs to the next room, my uncle unfolds out of the bed in his underwear, and my aunt, horrified by the whole scene, proceeds to wing a can of beans at him.
(sniff!) That’s the stuff family my albums are made of.
I found these plans on line - maybe they’ll help?
Or maybe these??
Just as a by-the-way, my very first apartment, a tiny studio, had a Murphy bed. In the 16 months I lived there, I think I put the bed up maybe half a dozen times. But I lived alone and I pretty much just went home to sleep and change. Why make work for myself?
We have a very nice one and love it. The exterior is a nice cherry wood cabinet, it pulls down with about a quarter-pound pull and touches down lightly (very wel designed cantilevered springs), and the mattress is a high-quality conventional mattress (and can be replaced with any conventional mattress, no having to acquire some specially-sized of specially-designed pallette or anything).
It’s nice to not have to make up the bed when we’re lazy, just fold the whole works up into the wall 
You can buy the hardware and plans from a company called Lee Valley, it can be installed, long ways or side ways, and is available from Canada which should cut down on shipping.
I am longing to have a Murphy bed one day, so I have already done some looking around. Check them out I’m sure you’ll like what you see.
(Sorry, don’t know how to do the linky thing, but you should be able to find it, they are quite a large enterprise. Also, they have very many other way cool things.)
Good luck.