Manchester Murphy Wall Bed

This a Murphy Wall bed completed on 9/17/2007. It is called the Manchester, named from the original customer that bought this style. It is a basic (Alpine) Murphy bed dressed up a little with molding to the face and some crown and base moldings.

The face molding was made from solid stock. Some of my models have off the shelf moldings on the face. This one was solid maple with an ogee design on the edge. It is then re-sawed in half to make it approximately 5/16” thick. Notice that the out side and top and bottom molding is about 2” wide while the inside is 4”. Normally you would double up the 2” molding in the middle so that the miters are the same, but on this one I just made it twice as wide. Doing this I did have to miter it a little different, mark the center and miter down both sides. This gave a flatter surface to attach the legs. And since the legs are on the molding they weren’t as noticeable as on some other models.

I have recently changed the base molding. I still use a 5 ½” crown that is modified, but instead of wrapping it around the bed, I’ve just place it on the front side. This was done because the mitered joint kept getting broke during shipping. What I do now is just turn the molding onto itself. I cut it to the length that I want and then 45 it as I normally would. I then 45 a small piece that is placed back in there. This is a nice way to ending a piece of molding and not make it look out of place. It also gives a nice profile to the edge.

The color was Gunstock from Minwax. My samples that I sent to the customer would never match the Gunstock that they used on other furniture. The customer ended up sending a sample and we fixed the problem. I ended up having to leave it on longer until stain got a little tacky. I then smoothed it out and sealed it.

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