Feels great to finally put the finishing touches on this one! Since this room is used as an office every day, and a guest room only a few weeks a year, we liked the idea of using a Murphy bed to make it feel more comfortable for its primary use. After seeing a few examples at friends’ houses and online, we came up with this design for a full wall of custom built-ins.

I started by buying a Murphy bed hardware kit and then following their instructions to build a plywood enclosure for the bed. In parallel I built the carcasses for the two drawer base cabinets on either side of the bed. With the bed done and painted (and the back wall painted to match), I installed the bed and base cabinets. I also added dimmable reading lights to the inside ceiling of the bed enclosure, and added (blue) outlets with usb ports (for easy guest device charging) right above each bedside cabinet.

To give the impression of shaker style cabinets on the face of the bed, I added 1/4 inch poplar frames. I built and installed countertops for each base cabinet out of 6/4 white oak finished with Rubio Monocoat Smoke . At this point we had to pause for a bit because it was time for some guests to come through and test it out.

For the shelving units on either side, I first built plywood sides with dados where each shelf would go. I also built the shelves (out of 6/4 white oak like the counters) and cut matching dados in the sides and backs. I installed poplar splines into the dados in the sides and against the back wall, which support the “floating” shelves. Once the finished shelves were installed, I added painted 1/4 inch MDF fronts to all exposed plywood edges.

Finally, I built and installed the drawers and drawer fronts, and added hardware to the drawers and to the false cabinets on the bed. Then some repair to the baseboards and walls, caulk, and lots of touch up paint on the bed, walls, and ceiling (my least favorite part of any project). Paint color is Oxford Gray by Benjamin Moore.

This one took a while but we’re happy with how it turned out!