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Old 01-03-2016, 08:23 PM   #1
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Foldable Bunk Beds

Hey Everyone,

I didn't like the idea of having permanent beds sucking up so much precious real estate in the big beauty.

My dad and I were able to engineer a folding bunk bed (2 actually) and it works pretty well.

The nice part is that (in our case) you get 2 decent sized twin beds and when they are folded up take up about only 7 in off the wall. Kind of like a Murphy bed setup but with bunk beds. Very sturdy and subtle. Cant wait to use them!
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Old 01-03-2016, 08:26 PM   #2
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omg they are sideways SORRY!
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Old 01-03-2016, 09:39 PM   #3
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A couple shots of Jose should take care of that.
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Old 01-03-2016, 11:08 PM   #4
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I built a steel version of bunk beds similar to yours. Mine latch in open or closed position but had to have custom width mattresses made two inches narrower than a twin. Ill try to post a photo or two.

Bill
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Old 01-03-2016, 11:09 PM   #5
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Great! My photo is sideways too.
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Old 01-05-2016, 09:22 PM   #6
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I hadn't really considered doing this before - we were wondering about creating a playspace, and I think this would allow for that.

Do you leave the beds made up while folded, i.e. is it just drop-n-sleep?
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Old 01-06-2016, 06:24 AM   #7
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Not really, there is a gap behind the mattress and the bedding will fall behind the beds if left on while folded up.
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Old 01-09-2016, 02:48 PM   #8
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How about some dimensions and build notes?
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Old 01-10-2016, 11:01 AM   #9
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Here is a photo of the bunk frames without the mattresses. You can see a little better how they are built
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Old 01-10-2016, 11:06 AM   #10
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Here is how they fold up. There is a latch on both sides that release when a chain is pulled.
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Old 01-10-2016, 11:09 AM   #11
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Then the chains from both sides have a center chain to pull both sides at once
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Old 01-10-2016, 11:14 AM   #12
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Building bunk beds on floor of garage.
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Old 06-15-2023, 10:59 PM   #13
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Folding Beds

We are looking at getting a school bus donated to our non-profit which we are wanting to turn into a bunk house. Any chance of getting the plans for these bunks
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Old 06-16-2023, 02:49 PM   #14
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Originally Posted by Deacon View Post
We are looking at getting a school bus donated to our non-profit which we are wanting to turn into a bunk house. Any chance of getting the plans for these bunks
The original post is from 2010 so you may not get the answer you're looking for. Start a new post and you'll probably get a lot of more current ideas. The people here are very helpful.
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Old 06-16-2023, 09:19 PM   #15
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foldable bunk beds

Not as elegant, but a more flexible solution might be the Disc-O-Bed set up. It is a pair of cots that can be stacked into a set of bunk beds. I purchased a set to use in my bus instead of making folding bunk beds. A little pricy, but with the cost of lumber and plywood, I figure it is close in price to what it would cost in materials for me to build something similar. With these, you could even take the beds out of the bus and use them elsewhere. i will say though that you might want to stick with the large size vs the XL size. I bought an XL size to use in mine. I think 2 XL cots (one on each side) would result in too narrow of a walkway.
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Old 06-16-2023, 09:33 PM   #16
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Quote:
Originally Posted by skoontz View Post
Not as elegant, but a more flexible solution might be the Disc-O-Bed set up. It is a pair of cots that can be stacked into a set of bunk beds. I purchased a set to use in my bus instead of making folding bunk beds. A little pricy, but with the cost of lumber and plywood, I figure it is close in price to what it would cost in materials for me to build something similar. With these, you could even take the beds out of the bus and use them elsewhere. i will say though that you might want to stick with the large size vs the XL size. I bought an XL size to use in mine. I think 2 XL cots (one on each side) would result in too narrow of a walkway.
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