Mikel46516 wrote:Thanks John. I will give more thought to that front window. Can't wait to see yours completed.
You and me both!
I've attached some pictures which hopefully will be helpful and show you how I configured my platform. You may wind up doing something differently.... but this is how I did it.
There's an oak rail on each side of the cabin. The 2nd section of plywood is cut in such a way to have "tabs" on each side that 1) ride along the rails and 2) lock into the notches created in the delrin blocks. There are also delrin sliders (3 of them) that help the sliding action. You'll notice there's also 2 heavy extension springs to help in moving the panels. I may wind up putting some small wheels, embedded somewhere, to help the sliding action. But all in all, the sliding action works well. As previously mentioned, I used 5 panels. You'll see the 5th panel, under the birch ply, is fixed to the floor. This anchors the entire bed platform and keeps things from sliding around. When the platform is in the couch position there was a lot of movement in the platform your back rests against, as it wants to push up against the cabinetry in back of that panel. But once your mattress is installed, you'll find you need that space back there for the portion of the mattress that folds over... it needs somewhere to reside, so it fills that space nicely.
We just purchased our mattress recently. We had looked into getting a specially made mattress (which would have cost probably 800-$1000). We tried a mattress from Ikea to see how it would work and that cost $150. Figured if it didn't work and had to get the custom mattress, we'd be out only $150, so worth the try. The Ikea mattress (actually it's a futon with a split in it) worked great. It's 4 inches thick. I wish it were 5 but still it works fine. My wife and I sat on it in the bed position and we don't really feel the door edge in any negative way. It folds up great.
Hope this all helps
John