A little more Rock-n-Roll

Well, just in time for the American Adventurist SoCal Mountain Rendezvous, the Rock-N-Roll bed is "done".  Or at least, "done enough to sleep on".

It took a bit of a push, especially given the near record-setting heat and humidity we suffered through for the Labor Day weekend, but we're at a point where we can sleep on the new bed system.  Between that and a few other odd jobs, we're good to go for camping next weekend!

More after the jump...

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Rock-N-Roll, Baby!

Who's ready to Rock-n-Roll?

I'm nearing completion on my project to replace my $100 Craigslist conversion van bench/bed with a Westfalia-style Rock-n-Roll bed.

More after the jump...

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Retro Post: Astrolander Rear Door Rack - Version 2

Another Retro Post.  This time, we're catching up on some (not-so) recent changes to the rack system mounted to the rear doors of the Astrolander.

After using Version 1 of my our rear-door fuel storage rack for a while, I learned a few things.  Namely, I learned that I needed more outdoor storage for dirty stuff and things that need to be accessed or put-away while the van is more or less "loaded".

More after the jump...

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Retro Post: Interior build v3.0

In my quest to get the blog caught up with my various forum Build Threads, it's time for another Retro Post.  This time, making a big leap forward with a new approach to the interior systems.

So I'd been talking about doing this for quite a while: Fixing the interior layout to better fit my needs. We love the van, but there's a bit of a "10lbs of crap in a 5lb bag" problem, and some of the decisions I made early on have caused problems down the line.

Most specifically, I really hated that I was never able to find a perfect arrangement for the fridge. I knew I wanted it somewhere behind the driver's seat or under the bed, but lack of overhead height meant the latter was a no-go, and getting any chest fridge to fit behind the seat either wasted a lot of space or forced me to relocate a BUNCH of stuff every time we stopped to camp. Not good. The whole point of this is for things to be easy.

 I spent a lot of time (like literally 2 years) moving things around, building different fridge mounting boxes, and trying to make things 5% more efficient. During this time I was also hanging out at the Samba and daydreaming about how much interior space the Westy VW guys have. There, I got exposed to "the new hot thing" for their kitchens - a Danfoss swing-compressor replacement for the finicky old Dometic Absorption fridges that Westfalia originally installed.  Mechanically, they're the same hardware as all the good "chest" fridges the Overland folks are using, but in upright "front loader" footprints.  The VW guys are loving them because they can slot right into place in the original westy cabinets, but actually hold more food, since the swing compressor takes up less space than the old heat-engine system. Better yet, they run efficiently on 12v batteries and don't carry all the problems of a propane-driven 3-way.

Lightbulb.

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Retro Post: AWD to 4WD Conversion with NP233 Transfer Case

Another Retro Post.  This time I'm documenting converting the Astro from All Wheel Drive (AWD) to proper Four Wheel Drive (4WD) with a 2-speed NP233 Transfer Case from a 2000 S-10 Blazer LS 2-door.  (Thanks again, General, for making parts-interchange work so well!)

This was almost installed as a "kit", as I purchased 95% of the bits from another Astro/Safari owner.  His original thread is here, and includes a lot of other good detail.  Check it out, if you're headed down this path.  The completeness of the work Dean did means there's very little new "art" here (which is why I initially didn't do much write-up), but once again, this could be useful for someone outside the Astro/Safari community.

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Retro Post: Astro Van Lift-Kit Installation

I've been guilty, multiple times during the life of the Astrolander project, of letting my detailed blog posts get out of sync with the current state of affairs.  My build threads on ExpeditionPortal and the AstroSafariVans.org forums have been maintained somewhat more diligently, but I realize not everyone follows there.  To help remedy that, I'm undertaking some "Retro" posts to re-document some of the work that I've done but not covered here.

Here's the first installment:  Installing the Overland Vans 4" Lift Kit.
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Refurbishing a Wooden Box for a Shoe Shine Kit

It's time for another project.  Back in June, we celebrated our Anniversary, and Kimberley gifted me with a wonderful subscription to Bespoke Post.  My first "box" was a seriously complete shoe shine kit.

I already had a few bits and pieces for caring for my few items of quality leather footwear, but like many guys, I was storing it all in an old shoebox.  As I've invested recently in some better shoes, this was a fitting gift, but it was so upscale that it felt awkward just to chuck it all into the same ratty old box.

I remembered that I had an old wooden box that had belonged to my Grandfather.  It had been among his vast trove of random objects in his garage after he'd passed away.  When my mother conveyed to me a small collection of hand-tools from his bench, she used the wooden box to carry them.  Honestly, I have little idea what the box would have originally been used for, but I understand why it was there - like my Grandfather I'm always loathe to discard any object that can be made useful again.

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Astrolander Update: Rear-Door Mounted Fuel Carrier

When I first started building this van for overland travel, I figured I'd eventually end up with one of the ubiquitous massive steel bumpers with swing-away mounts for a spare tire and a collection of Jerry cans and other accessories. After a while, it became clear that any such device would have to be custom-made and exceedingly heavy and/or exceedingly expensive. There are a lot of reasons to relocate the tire out from undernearth the van in the stock location, but it is a difficult thing to manage on a van with the 3-part "Dutch" door system with the upper hatch and short lower doors - unless you can swing the tire away, you simply can't put a spare tire back there if you want to be able to open the rear doors. After spending a TON of time scheming and taking measurements, as well as gauging how I actually USE my van and what I really need to carry, I've come to the following conclusions:

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Mini-Update: LED Dome Lamps

Just another little Mini-Update:

When I was ordering some other parts from JC Whitney, I needed a few more items to get to the free shipping threshold, so I went ahead and ordered a pair of these Ultraflex LED Dome Lamps, in the 2.5"x1.5" size, in order to retrofit them into the dome lamps on the Astrolander conversion.


These are a 24-LED array, but they needed a flat place to mount, so I had to do a little work.



The kit includes a variable-size shunt that fits in place of the original incandescent bulb and provides a 12v/gnd connection. Then I notched the enclosure with a couple of slots.


Then I cut this shelf from a piece of scrap ABS plastic. Excuse the crude work, I was going fast trying to finish before returning to my Daddy duties on a Saturday. The ABS was from an unused portion of a drawer organizer in the recycling bin.


The tabs on the ABS mate to the slots in the housing. Two on one side, one on the other. The ABS is about an 1/8" thick, but is fairly flexible, so easy enough to bend to insert and remove from the slots, which is important since the mounting holes for the dome lamp assembly are behind it, on either side of the original bulb.


The LED matrix then is affixed to the ABS with the supplied double-stick tape (already applied to the back of the PCB). The mating connection is plugged in to the shunt adapter.


In this location it has 1/4" or so of relief from the diffuser lens. Unless you're really looking, you can't tell there's anything different under there.


Until you turn it on. Compare the brightness against the incandescent map lights. These will get converted to LEDs too, as soon as I find an LED kit with an appropriate bulb adapter or have time to make a few from hacked bulbs.



This is a daylight shot, and you can already see the brightness of the LEDs (foreground) versus the incandescent bulb (background). These have made a huge difference in the ease of buckling baby into the car seat after dark. They are NOT a perfect white, they do cast a bit of a blue hue, but for this purpose and the price, I am quite happy. When I do the map lights, I may be a bit more careful about the color temperature as map reading, etc. is hard under bad lighting. I'm also considering red LEDs for the front map lights at least, as an option to help preserve night vision.

(Large pics as always on my web album). Read More...

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Side Project: Swivel Passenger Seat

OK, with this update, I should be more or less "caught up" with documentation vs. the state of reality on the project, at least with respect to things with a significant time investment.

I finally got around to finalizing a GOOD fix for my issues with the swiveling seat. A rearward-facing seat (at least in the front passenger position) has been a core part of my interior design from almost the beginning. As soon as basic measurements and layout attempts proved to me that I would need to use some variant on a VW Weekender/Westy layout, I wanted to have the expanded living space of the front row facing aft.

As usual, more complete and larger images available on my web album. I will also make reference to some other photos from the first draft installation.

My first attempt at this was to buy an off-the-shelf "bolt-in" swivel mechanism from Discount Van-Truck (hereafter "DVT"). The idea is that this swivel plate bolts in between the stock seat and slider rails. Unfortunately for the Astro/Safari version, although the bolt-spacing is correct, it doesn't really take into account that the seat rails and seat bottom are curved. In order to accommodate this arch, I had to add some spacers to the bolts:

Combined with the swivel plate itself, this adds up to over three extra inches of seating height. This made it tight, even for shorter passengers. With the headliner removed to do all of my other work, I was pretty uncomfortable letting anyone too tall ride in that seat, lest they risk a head injury on exposed metal.


The other problem with this design is that the stock seat has some rearward rake built into the rails. This lifts the front of the seat and makes seating more comfortable, especially with the limited legroom. As you can see in the above picture, though, this incline is static and below the plane of rotation of the seat, so as you swivel the seat you go from a sideways slant to the front edge of the seat being much LOWER than the rear when fully swiveled. This was VERY uncomfortable.

Both of these "features" alone warranted a new plan of attack.


When I scored my donor van, I was pretty excited because it included TWO swivel seat bases. I also liked that these had a very beefy locking prawl so they felt securely locked when facing forward. Unfortunately they shared the same design flaw with the rear-rake built-in below the plane of rotation.


That wasn't the worst of it, though. It seems that GM had made some small but significant changes in the interior portions of the Astro/Safari van somewhere along the way. Despite having an identical outer unibody, the 1995 donor van had a few key differences to my 2003 van. Under the rear of my front seats there's a small duct outlet that blows HVAC air onto the feet of the passengers in the middle row. At first I thought I could utilize the GTRV donor swivel base by just notching the back of the plate to clear this outlet. I quickly went after it with a plasma cutter before I really understood what was going on. It turns out, that the vent outlet has ducting behind it (duh!), in the form of a very wide and flat plenum that sits under a good portion of the seat. This is why the passenger seat is up on those riser rails you can see in the first picture. Where the feet touch it is flat, but most everywhere else sits 1-2" higher with ducting, carpet, underlayment, etc. These flat-bottom seat bases just weren't going to work.

I looked at a variety of ways of just trying to put little "feet" on these bases to use them, but it always stacked up to making the passenger seat too high again. With all of the clearance needed for the various levers, there just wasn't an easy way to chop two or three inches out of the design without basically rebuilding it from scratch. Rather than head off down that road, I decided to leave the swivels intact for resale, and went after making the original DVT swivel base work "right".


After a lot of back and forth, I built these. They're pretty simple, just a couple of short sections of 1.5" x 2.5" tubing, with some angle stock welded on. The second project from my new-old welder. The more I work with it, the more I realize it will need a minor overhaul to fix the design issues with it. Fortunately others have gone ahead and documented how to do that.


Here you can see everything stacked up. Unfortunately I still have the "curved" slider track under the swivel plate, but this was sort of necessary because if the slider was on top of the swivel, you'd have too much of the locking lever sticking out between your legs when the seat was fully rearward. This keeps the lever handles in a better position. More importantly, you can see that the plane of rotation is now mostly flat (depending a little on the slider position), and that the rake is built-in above the swivel plate. In this photo the swivel is "facing" rearward, and the 1" tubing spacers on the left raise up the front of the seat in all positions.


Here's the swivel plate "mid swivel", and the detail of the locking lever. One problem with both original swivel designs is that they only locked in the forward position. When facing rearward, reaching to grab something off the dash or trying to adjust your position with your legs would make the seat turn instead of moving your body, like pushing one of those shopping carts where all four wheels swivel, or a boat with no keel. Sort of annoying.


Fixing this was the easiest part of the whole project, I just nibbled out another notch with a cutting wheel on my grinder, so now the seat locks in the rearward position as well.


It is hard to see here unless you know what you're looking at, but the other minor improvement was to heat and bend the locking lever slightly, so that the handle comes "up" a bit and fits the contour of the lower seat a bit better. It gets it out of the way so you're not banging your heel on it if you cross your legs under while seated.


All told, the passenger seat now sits almost 3/4" lower than stock, instead of the 3+ inches higher than stock. The extra headroom just makes me feel that much safer for passengers since the GTRV reinforcing ring does seem to sit a tad lower than the original roofline, but I didn't want to drop things too much lest the armrest in the door be wildly out of whack against the arm rest on the seat. Building my brackets this way also moved the seat rearward about and 1.5 inches. This makes up for the awful passenger foot room more than you'd think, since the foot well is tapered. Any further and I was worried the upper seatbelt pickup would be too far forward.


As currently mounted, the edge of the seat just clears the B-pillar if I swivel the seat clockwise. If I want to go counter-clockwise, I have to move the seat back to the fully upright position first. I still could move the seat inboard another inch-and-a-bit if I use the other mounting holes, but so far this seems fine.


And now I can finally enjoy a proper "living area" facing the bench seat opposite with enough space for a table for eating or cards.

Two answer two popular questions:
1) No, I wouldn't use the seat in this position while traveling. The seatbelt anchors aren't really in the right place, and it would make my wife carsick faster than an alpine road anyway.

2) Not sure if I plan to do the same to the driver's seat or not. Because of my planned layout, my Edgestar fridge will most likely be behind the driver's seat when camping, so I wouldn't be able to swivel without a lot of shuffling around. I could test to be sure, but I also think the driver's seat would have to be inclined to an uncomfortable angle to clear the steering wheel anyhow. That said, having "facing" seating for four adults would be cool if we got stuck in a rain or something... Read More...

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Top Transplant - Relocate Wiring and Overhead Console Project

Here is more of my retroactive documentation. In this installment, I tackled the relocation of the overhead dome/map lamp and add an overhead switch panel.

As always, more/bigger pictures on my web album.

The main push for this part of the project was to deal with the aftermath of having removed the forwardmost structural rib from the Astro van roof. The GTRV steel reinforcing ring took care of the structural element, but there was also a couple of wiring harnesses that passed over this rib, one of them to feed the forward dome lamp and map lights that also hung here. The GTRV donor van had an aftermarket RV dome/map light in the overhead space between the reinforcing ring and the windshield/rearview mirror area. I liked this placement, but I was pretty sure I could make mine look more factory by reusing the original GM light assembly.


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Top Transplant - Lifting the Top

At this point in my documentation, I need to deviate from counting the "days" I've been working. Due to changes in work demands, a sick infant, and my wife's waning patience at being left for whole days or weekends at a time while I toil away at my buddy's shop, I'm just not getting whole days to work on the project. The upside is that since things have reached a certain level of completeness (see the last update), I was able to bring the van home again, and work on things for an hour or two here and there in the driveway. Progress comes in bursts, on afternoons when I can get away from work a little early and weekends when the baby naps or I can leave her with Mommy for (shorter) periods of time.

Instead, I'll try to capture "projects" as they are completed. Please remember that some of these projects span many days of short bursts and are often interposed with other projects, so things may appear out of order slightly.

Here then, I will cover the saga of "Lifting the Top". My goal, at the outset, was to be able to raise and lower the top on electric power, since I wanted my wife to be able to operate the top as easily as opening a sunroof. With the GTRV design, after releasing the latches, you must lift the top for 8-10 inches before the gas springs kick in and raise the top the rest of the way. When lowering the top, you have to hold it a bit above "fully closed" while you tuck the corners of the tent fabric away from the latches. For me this means putting my shoulder up against the top and standing up a bit. My wife is obviously smaller, and not quite as strong, so I was hoping to avoid this for her.

As always, more/bigger pictures on the web album.

The problem with electric lifting actuators in this situation is packaging. The GTRV top is very low profile (lending the "Garagable" part to "Garagable Top RVs"), which doesn't leave much room for a bulky actuator. I was excited, then, to find these "tubular" actuators from Firgelli Automations.


The trick to this design is that the drive motor is contained within the actuator tube. This makes for a compact design, one that doesn't take up much more room than the gas spring that was included in the original design.



First I tackled the upper brackets, where the actuator hits the pop-top. These brackets came from Firgelli, and I thought they were nice and compact until I started messing with them and found some oddness. First, the drilled holes weren't exactly square to the material, which made tapping them less than fun. Why tap? Well, I was concerned that if the mechanism ever failed while in the "down" position, it would be difficult (or impossible) to service the actuators since they'd be trapped under the cap, and a burned actuator would prevent me from raising the top manually. So instead, I tapped the brackets themselves then used button-head cap screws from the outside to bolt everything up. This way, if there was a problem I could simply unbolt the bracket from outside and raise the top manually. Its a good thing I did it this way.... read on.



The Firgelli brackets weren't going to work on the van-side of things. They advertise "almost 180 degrees of rotation" from the bracket. I only needed about 40 degrees, but in an arc that wasn't compatible with the pinch-points on the brackets, so I had to make my own. I started by clipping a couple of corners from some 2" x 3/16" bar stock, then transferred over the critical measurements. The red is layout fluid, which when brushed on, makes it easy to transfer marks and measurements over to the steel. This is one of those things that (as an Electrical Engineer, not an ME or pro-machinist) I was glad to learn about when I was building Battlebots back in the last decade.



After a bit more cutting, a little drilling and grinding, and some less-than-ideal welds, I have a couple of these brackets. These are the first project done by my "new" old welder. I've had this welder since the aforementioned Battlebot-days, got from another Bot-builder friend, but I'd never gotten off my butt and set it up until now. It's an old SIP design from Italy, with a few quirks which I will get around to fixing later, but for a hobbyist like myself, it should do ok.



After paint, I made a couple of pads from cork/rubber gasket material. These should help seal against leaks and keep the roof damage to a minimum.



The lower bracket and actuator in place, complete with stainless sheet metal screws.



In the up position, everything was looking good. The actuators, even "unlocked" had enough holding power to keep the roof up without any struggle. "Locking" the actuators by shorting the motor terminals was built-in to my design and proved more than adequate to keeping things from moving. I started "small" by just moving the actuators a few inches, and everything was fine.



After I tried to run the actuators all the way down, though, I found a significant problem. After a bunch of blown fuses and swear words, much probing, and disconnecting and reconnecting of wiring and bracketry, I was able to find the problem: The actuators aren't really built to take the load I was putting them under, despite the 150lb rating. The motor assembly is held in the actuator tube by a pair of plastic (!!!) standoffs that fit the extruded profile of the tube. Under heavy compression load, these standoffs were compressing and sliding, and the motor was hitting the cap on the actuator tube, pinching wires and shorting things as it happened. There may still be hope for this design, if I can get some metal motor mounts machined up, but for now the electric lift design was DOA.



With a heavy heart, and 8 extra holes in the van roof :(, I gave up and fitted the original GTRV gas springs to the top. This isn't a "bad" design, it just wasn't what I was hoping for. Once again I have the problems of manually lifting/holding the top while raising/lowering, but so does every other GTRV owner...

On the upside, I was able to get to this point prior to the San Diego ExPo Meet-n-greet, so I was able to show off a mostly-functional pop top! :)

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GTRV Organ Donor Teardown, Day 1

Due to the long holiday weekend, I actually had some time to spend starting the teardown in order to prep my "Organ Donor" GTRV for the top-ectomy and transplant to my 2003 recipient van.  Mostly this was about getting things out of the way, and figuring out how the original conversion was constructed.  It was a very productive day!  My full photo log, complete with all the gory details is available here.  

From GTRV-Teardown

Please forgive the seemingly inane annotations on some of the photos, but they are there to remind myself what I was photographing, in case I have to refer back to these pictures a month or a year from now. 

After a full day of removing hundreds of screws and drilling hundreds of rivets, I'm now very close to being able to remove the steel reinforcing ring from the donor van's roof and separately lifting the top assembly off altogether.

From GTRV-Teardown

Most importantly, I have learned a lot about how the GTRV conversion are constructed, so I now feel very confident I can complete this transplant with minimal problems. The biggest casualty thus far is the headliner carpet from the donor. It was glued into place for the entire perimeter of the access portal, and removing it was destructive. It will need to be replaced when I'm done with the mechanical transplant, but I will be brainstorming for ways to avoid having to have the new headliner glued in the same way.
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And so it begins...

Some of you may know that I've been in the research phase of a new vehicle project for quite a while. Using the excellent resources of the Expedition Portal forums, I've been scheming on the most affordable way to build a 3-4 passenger Overland/Expedition Camper. This should be the start of a series of posts as I being the transformation from8-passenger midsize van to what a friend has dubbed an "Astrolander".

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Baby's First Hack

Even before Kimberley and I knew we were having a baby, I knew I was looking forward to being that "cool dad" who can build anything for his Kids. Science projects and Halloween costumes are going to be epic in our household in the years to come. I've always enjoyed hacking for myself, and I always knew I'd end up hacking for my kids, but this little project sort of sneaked up on me. Its appropriate that this "Baby's First Hack" fits perfectly in the nature of most good hacks: It was a simple fix for a problem that needed solving only because of limitations in the original design of a product.

As Kimberley and I were starting to move into the nursery after all the paint and wainscoting was finished, she ran into a problem installing her preferred mobile, the Tiny Love "Sweet Island Dreams". She preferred this one because it played real classical music, recorded with a real orchestra, not dumbed down MIDI or electronic noise. However, our new crib has a very wide cap rail (click first pic to see), and there wasn't enough "bite" in the mounting system to attach the mobile. Examining the mount, I could immediately see where the manufacturer could have solved this problem for us by making the mount for the threaded post more adjustable (a few more molded in slots for the "lock" in the back of the plate would have sufficed), but as is so often the case, this was apparently designed as a "one size fits some" solution.

Enter Baby's First hack. I cut a mounting plate from some 3/16" aluminum sheet I had in my shop that allowed me to drop down the mounting spindle to allow the mobile to fit over our wide crib rail. The resulting mount and its clearly Autobot-logo outline was purely a bonus. At least my daughter will grow up to fight Decepticons.

The most complicated part of this whole mini-project was getting the mounting flange off the back of the mobile. Everything in this toy is secured with a weird triangular anti-tamper screw that I've never seen before. It gave me an excuse to finally buy the 100piece anti-tamper bit set I've been eyeballing, and fortunately one of the tri-wing bits included gave me enough leverage to remove the screws, even though it wasn't the correct bit.

After that, it was simply a matter of screwing the mounting spindle to my new mount, then attaching that where the locking flange used to be on the back of the mobile. Since this mount covers the battery compartment (and will thus need to be removed for battery changes), I replaced the tamper proof screws with some Phillips-head screws from my collection of parts removed during previous hacks. In a rare move, I went ahead and discarded the tamper screws rather than save them, as they're a subtle affront from the manufacturer. Remember the Hacker's creed: If you can't open it, you don't own it. Anti-tamper fasteners are just another way that manufacturers try to trap you as a consumer. Devices are designed to be hard to repair or modify so that you have to buy another one as soon as it ceases to meet your needs.

As you can see from this side shot, I've increased the vertical bite of the mount by about 1-1/4". In case it isn't obvious, the threaded spindle passes between two vertical slats in the crib, and is then secured with the giant plastic wingnut. Combined with the flange at the top, this provides a surprisingly secure yet easy to install mounting system. What probably isn't obvious in the first photo (mounted on the crib) is that I've chamfered the edges on the plate and sized the mounting screws for the spindle so that they're flush to the plate, so this is nice and smooth and baby-safe!

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Guest Room Remodel - Budget Murphy bed with Ikea Pax cabinet frames

Over the last couple of weeks, I've undertaken a complete re-do of our guest room.

One of our key goals was to keep the room multi-functional, so we really wanted a Murphy Bed (folding wall bed) to make room when the bed wasn't needed. Unfortunately, even the cheapest Murphy systems we could find were well out of our price range. With a Queen bed, side cabinets and a rudimentary headboard, delivery, and installation, we were looking at nearly $5000, and that's just for a thin white-melamine cabinet with vinyl-foil doors.

I knew I could do better (price-wise) if I did something myself, but I don't have the equipment or time to make full cabinets or raised-panel doors. Wanting an alternate solution I did a lot of searching and scheming and eventually hit upon the idea of using Ikea Pax wardrobe cabinetry (somewhat modified).


This was a long-ish project, so I won't go through every step here. You can see the evolution of the project along with descriptions of many steps here on the Web Album.

Since the main reason for undertaking this myself rather than just purchasing a basic melamine Murphy Bed was cost ($5000 or so, as of November 2008), let me break down the main expenditures:

murphybedframe.com Queen-size Murphy Mechanism + Foundation .... $390
Floor saver (attaches frame to wall instead of floor)............$80

2 x Pax Cabinet Frames, 20x23x93.................................$180
1 x Pax Cabinet Frame, 39x23x9...................................$100
4 x Pax Birkeland Doors, 19 5/8 x 90 1/8.........................$480
2 x Pax Birkeland Glass Doors, 19 5/8 x 90 1/8...................$240
3 x Gravyr Handles 2-pack........................................$24

Melamine Sheets (Home Depot).....................................$60
2 x Piano Hinges, 72" (ACE Hardware).............................$30

Dimmable Halogen Lights, door-switch, wiring, etc................$40

Assorted Hardware, Hole covers, magnetic catches, etc............$10

"Wrought" Iron Headboard from our old bed........................$0

=====================================================================
......................................... Rough Total ..........$1634

Even accounting for a few tools that I had to buy (<$50) and a big pile of Komplement accessories and sales tax, you can see that I came out way ahead.


So, what did it take to pull all this off? Surprisingly little.

As far as tools, I needed a Circular saw, a Table saw (borrowed from a friend), Cordless Drill, various drill bits including 15mm and 35mm forstner bits (the tools I bought), hammer, screwdriver, and various measuring tools, squares, and a few clamps.

This whole build was based on using standard Ikea Pax wardrobe frames. This meant I could fit stock Birkeland doors, which in my mind was the biggest hurdle to overcome. The only real trick to this is that the Pax frames only come in two widths: 19 5/8" (1-door wide) and 39 1/4" (2-doors wide), whereas a Queen bed and frame needs roughly 65" clearance. The solution was to "extend" a wide cabinet to a "double-wide" cabinet and make the doors bifold (4-doors wide).

To do this, I made new top and toe-kick panels in the adjusted width. Using the original top as a guide, I machined my new top to have the same pockets for the Ikea cam-lock hardware so that everything would assemble the same way as the original cabinet frame. I then added a horizontal stringer bolted to the wall to keep the top piece from bowing under its own weight. The toe-kick was similar, except that instead of a full bottom to the cabinet, my toe-kick is only topped by a strip that fills the gap to the Murphy base frame (the center cabinet is "bottomless" and the Murphy Bed frame sits directly on the floor, bolted to the wall.)

Attaching the doors is nearly identical to the Ikea method, except that given the added weight of a second door panel, I felt compelled to add three additional hinges on each side. These were mounted just like the regular hinges into additional recesses I drilled into the doors.

The lighting is actually not Ikea, because I came across some Dimmable Halogens for a great price at my local Dixieline. Rather than just put in the lights and a dimmer, I also built a switched outlet into the cabinet frame. A momentary switch is mounted such that power to the lights is only "On" when the cabinet doors are open, since I didn't want the hot halogen lights left on by accident when the bed was folded up into the cabinet.

The other big improvement in this implementation vs. the cheap commercial Murphy Beds was the headboard. Since the Pax wardrobe cabinets are deeper than I need (even accounting for a pillowtop mattress), there is room between the wall and upright bed frame to accommodate our spare "wrought" iron headboard. When the bed is lowered, the headboard can be slid forward and bolted to the bed frame with two wingnuts. This provides a REAL headboard for our guests to lean against for reading, etc., something that was not provided by the cheap commercial beds we looked at.

Final results? We're very pleased.

The actual Murphy mechanism from MurphyBedFrame.com went together very easily and is well built, and their "Floorsaver" is a unique offering, as far as I can tell. Being able to bolt exclusively to the wall studs instead of into the subfloor made things much easier on me. My only knock is against their "foundation", which is really nothing more than a pine wood frame, some corrugated cardboard, and a quilted covering stapled on. For the $110 difference, I would just order the mechanism without the foundation and just make one from plywood, were I to do this again.

The Ikea cabinetry isn't as nice as real hardwood, but it actually feels less cheap and more sturdy than the thinner particleboard/melamine on offering from commercial Murphy Bed sellers. For our room, we actually wanted the white cabinets, but we could have also selected one of the other Pax finishes. NOTE: If using a cabinet finish other than white melamine, you'll probably want to buy one additional Pax cabinet frame. Use the side pieces from this extra cabinet as the raw lumber for the new top and toe kick panels. It will be slightly more expensive that buying melamine in sheets, but it gives you the option of "other-than-white", another difference versus the commercial Murphy Bed makers.

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Makes me proud!

Folks standing in light drizzle at 7 am to vote!

Our line moved quickly, though the drizzle did cause one real voting problem:

The ink pens used for our optical scan ballots is apparently water soluble. At least one voter had significant smudging of a bubble due to rainwater on her sleeve. She was issued a new ballot and her old one was invalidated. Hopefully this won't be a high-percentage trend, as this could exacerbate a shortage of ballots if turnout is unusually high (which seems likely).

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Arrived!

Had a little trouble with RV parking (somebody in my spot), but the Camparu is all set up, so I'm off to explore until someone realizes I don't belong here!

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Arrived, time for dinner!

Whenever possible, eat local and avoid franchises!

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Bugatti near Buttonwillow

Nice finding to break up the asphalt.
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