small creative space + wall bed = Happy Me!

Add this to the *long* list of reasons I L.O.V.E. my husband.  Look what he created for me...a queen-sized WALL BED...which gave me much more space in our not quite 10 x 10 irregularly-shaped guest bedroom turned craft/sewing/creating room for more...STORAGE!

Here's the bed folded down and ready for guests.

Being relatively new to sewing/crafting/creating, etc., my stash of supplies has multiplied faster than a wet mogwai (can't resist a movie reference, even if it's from 1984).  Our guest bed is a  queen which dominated the small space.  
We bought the mechanism online at www.wallbed.com for $299 (free shipping) which came with plans for building the cabinet.  It also came with a 'cut list' which we took to our local lumber yard and they cut the wood for us (b/c we don't have a table saw).  For both the lumber and the labor, it was about $400.

We had a closet to work around, so we couldn't do an entire wall of 'built-ins'.  Here you can see what we started with. 

Here's the wall that will soon become the aptly-termed 'wall bed'.  Notice the U.G.L.Y. clean out thing in the floor.

 My husband treated himself to a new Porter Cable finishing 3 gun finish nailer set for this project!  That made the assembly MUCH easier.  

His well-deserved splurge.

And this is what he built...at least the beginning of it.  

Which turned into this:.  The black hardware in the upper left is where the mechanism attaches.  

We followed the provided plans except we added 6 or 7 inches of depth to the cabinet to hide a horribly annoying plumbing clean out that is not flush (ha ha, no pun intended!) with the floor. 

The extra depth also allowed for more storage.  We had planned to use a basic shelving system of some kind, but luckily we took our time and did our research.  I love finding and using things in different ways that actually work better!  The perfect fit was Ikea's PAX wardrobe, so we got two, one for each side.  Because it's a wardrobe, it is SO much more functional than simple shelves. 

I got two wooden drawers, 2 wire baskets, a compartmentalized plastic drawer, and lots of shelves. 

I was so excited about these cabinets that I just started packing my stuff in.  I need to go back through and rearrange based on functionality, but this will give you an idea of what we did at least.

There are so many reasons to love my husband...I'll just add this to the list.  :)  Isn't it beautiful?