Ross Murphy Bed with Bookcase/Desk

This is a Wall Bed that I’ve built before. It is called the Horizontal Ross. It was completed November 5, 2008 and features solid maple raised panel doors on the face of the bed.

I wanted to focus on the bookcase on this unit. This is a new design and features a fold down door. When the door comes down the leg flips around and back under for support. To accomplish this I first had to add a “desk top” onto the back side of the door. Since the door is a frame and panel style, the back was not flat enough for a work surface. I used a continuous hinge on the lower section where the door hinges, but used an institutional style hinge for the leg. The problem with the leg was it had to fold all the way around from the desk top to the desk bottom. The only way I found to do this was with this style hinge.

Another problem I had was how was I going to keep the door closed. Unlike my Smithsonian style, there was no room for an outside latch. I created a system for the leg so that it could go behind a pair of rollers, by doing this the door would stay closed (see picture below).

If you notice most of the time on my murphy beds the bookcase is shorter and shallower in depth than the bed itself. This is so the crown can terminate into the side of the bed. To have a large enough work surface on this one, the bookcase had to be higher than the bed, so I reversed the sizes. I made the bookcase deeper than the bed and terminated the beds crown into the side of the bookcase, which leads me to the last item to note, the crown. On the horizontal style beds, the top needs to be flat and finished out. It is lower and will be seen. If I took the standard crown and placed it under the top, it would be too bulky and seem out of place. I took the same 3 1/4” crown used on the bookcase, matched the angle and riped off the top edge. This made the bed crown match the bookcase better.

Pictures of the door

Some building pictures:

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