we had a murphy in a door bed when I was growing up in Chicago. In the apartment in the dining area was a closet and we'd roll the bed out (it would be standing up on end) and lower it and then lift it up and roll it back into its closet. it was very nice when it was in the closet there was about 3 feet of unused space at each end I claimed those spaces as my own and had a small desk on one side and orange crates stacked oin the other end for shelves I had many happy times in there listening to my radio.Wish I could find a photo of it

Thanks Geoffrey, I saw their site and it looks good. In fact, the quality of their hardware and wood products looks really good, in general. I live chatted with a rep for Rockler and she said the hardware comes with designs; user reviews on the site were good.

yes--that is a good point about expense of this unit vs other options--but would like to get idea for what it WOULD cost to build and need some better specifics than just that photo... putting a sofa in this room and some pre-fab bookcases on couple of the walls would be less expensive and still address our desire to use it as more a reading/computer room for me but my husband would not want his 70 yr old sister to sleep on a fold-out couch no matter how comfortable the mattress might be...and this is the extra bedroom downstairs...more convenient for me as well rather than using one of the two bedrooms upstairs on day to day basis... we are planning on being here for long time--right now we don't have any bedroom furniture for this room because we have single/trundle beds in two bedrooms that we aren't going to be using in this house we are upgrading our daughter and her husband to real queen mattress vs their double--and taking their full-size mattress which is still in good shape for the 4th bedroom upstairs... some of the furniture in our master now will probably get moved up to that room since our new master is really too small for probably anything but the king bed and bedside chests--maybe room for double dresser under the wall-mounted flat-screen tv going opposite the bed--but just have to see how narrow the walkway past the bed is... like I said the new master is not that large but my husband really liked the back yard/other features of the house...he says we don't really spend any time in master except to sleep now (basically true) and the new master closet has built-in chests and shelfs to help with clothes storage... we can even move in some ready-made chests if we need too

I realize that because I put a photo of my kitchen as the first photo for the "feel" I want to continue in the office, my title and accompanying photo maybe confusing. Just giving this a **BUMP**