I've wanted a wallbed for as long as I can remember and building a guest room behind our garage gave me the perfect excuse. I got on the net to look for a ready-made one and was lucky enough to land on your website. What I read really impressed me compared to the info I gleaned from other sites -- features like no "special" mattress required, no floor mounting, standard height, the pneumatic piston mechanism... and the price! I thought that surely it must be too good to be true -- especially the part about the ease of building.... But, I read all the testimonials and looked through the photo gallery and we decided to give it a try. Well, I must say -- for once, a product actually lives up to its claims! And the best part is, your product enables one to get those creative juices flowing -- the result being a unique, beautiful, solid wood piece of furniture that anyone would be proud to own. From time to time, I still pull up your website just to see all the new photos of beds your customers have built. The designs are fantastic!
I started designing our bed with a steamer trunk motif in mind. We selected pine plywood for the frame and placed maple veneer on the face and backboard. We then stained the pine with a red oak stain and coated the maple with a semi-gloss polyurethane which gave it a mellow, golden glow. We purposely chose these two woods so as to achieve a stark contrast between the tight, satiny-smooth grain of the maple and the course, porous, wide grain of the pine. The pine is topped off with the same semi-gloss urethane. We built the cabinet deeper than the plan specs, used curved corner boards on the front of the sides and double-walled the sides to give the bed a massive, solid look.
As I was applying the urethane to the maple on the face of the bed, a three-dimensional picture of an elephant began to emerge from the grain in the center of the face. Notice in one of my pics how it appears an elephant is running toward you at a full charge -- ergo, the name Elephant Bed! I had noticed the grain was pretty, but an elephant didn't flesh out until I began to apply the urethane. A design challenge arose in finding a way to cover the screws used to mount the curved corner boards to the double-walled sides. Luckily, however, we have a friend who works for a company that manufactures hand-made copper lanterns, fountains and the like. He made for us four brass elephant head escutcheons to cover the screws. With that addition, one couldn't ask for a more unique began-as-a-trunk-bed-later-turned-elephant-bed piece of furniture. We attached a large handle to the front of the bed, as I am short and it's difficult for me to reach both legs at once to pull the bed down. Last but not least, I am amazed at how easily the bed pulls down and lifts from the floor. I have arthritis which sometimes makes lifting and pulling difficult. With the piston mechanism, however, the bed feels light as a feather. It practically lifts itself! I truly couldn't be more pleased.
I've attached fours pics including a close-up of one of the elephant head escutcheons and a close-up of the "charging" elephant....
Thanks for a wonderful product!
Charlotte H
Jackson, MS |
