Queen or King Bed in LR of 3326?

Hi,

If you have a 3326 you know that the double couch bed is a little lacking. I am thinking about building some plywood slats to fit on the ledge above the couch that you could put one of those Coleman inflatable beds on.

It should be easy to build. Some plywood slats cut to fit the area and a piece of wood on each slat to strengthen it. If I can find a place to stow them under the trailer it would be pretty easy to setup whenever you needed them.

If it works out alright, I might build them out of fiberglass to save weigth. I've got about 10 gallons of MGS335 lying about and several rolls of fiberglass.

I have been thinking of the same thing. There is room for it and that couch now shouldn't even be called a bed. I'm curious to see what you come up with when you are finished. Please take some pictures if you can.

I am just trying to think about how much loading that ledge can take. As long as the ends of the slats are cushioned, I think everything will be OK. You want to work as a single piece unit with very little flex.

I did some more looking at the a possible front bed. A couple of things you will have to do.

1. You will need to make sure that you will not overload the front interior seal.
   
   
2. The slats need to interlock and have a soft facing material so you won't crease the side seals.
   
   
3. I am still working on where to stash the slats. I am thinking about letting the slats do double duty so I can slide the generator out of the rear compartment.
   
   
4. I will also need to figure out where to store the inflate-a-bed.
   
   
5. If I make the front slats out of fiberglass and foam they will be very light.

[ShrimpBurrito]

I took have been thinking about this, and am curious to see what you decide to do. There's just 2 of us when we travel most of the time, but when we do have company, it's usually an extra 2 people, which means someone is on the couch and someone is on the floor. Talk about serious musical mattresses when it's time to go to bed, not to mention ZERO floor space.

You could even mount it so it raised up off the ledge a bit as to make a set of bunk beds. That's what I'm thinking about.

Dave

Well I thought about the bunk bed approach too, but next time you are in the trailer look at the spacing between the ledge and open couch bed. It is tight.

If you built composite slats, you could fit everything (slats and mattress) under the couch. The slats would have to latch to themselves and the adjacent slats.

I will give you another solution too, that I realized the other day too. If you made the end tables removable you could make the couch bed larger (by making it longer). That actually might be the more ideal solution. It would require less storage, weight, and easier to get in and out of.

[ShrimpBurrito]

I realize it's tight there between the ledge and open couch bed....so we could put something on top of the ledge to raise it up (i.e. spacers) before putting down the top bunk. That way, you could adjust the height of the top bunk to whatever you wanted, giving the bottom bunk (the folded out couch) as much room as desired.

I would need to get 2 people on the couch comfortably to solve the problem. It's not long enough because of the couch arm rests (I'm 6'2") nor is it wide enough to accommodate 2 people. Making it wider seems complicated because the slide-out portion of the couch is already not supported underneath; thus, an extension to make the couch wider would seemingly require legs and a way to attach it to the slide-out portion. The bunk bed idea seems potentially simpler.

What do you think?

Dave

[Bill]

In my 2720SL, I'm pretty sure that the couch arm rests are removable. I'll confirm next time I have it open. I realize that at 6'2" that might not help you a lot, but for shorter people, the extra 4 inches or so might make a difference.

Bill

The armrests are removable; I discovered that over the weekend.

I think the couch is wide enough for two people IF they could sleep on it north-south and not the designed east-west. Like you said you will need feet for the platform, but it should not require much. It would also be realively easy to accomodate 6'2" person just by making the platform longer.

By making the couch bottom cushion about 1.5" taller you could store the platform there and everything would be stowable under couch with room to spare.

[ShrimpBurrito]

Interesting idea changing the orientation of the sleepers. Sleeping tongue to bumper would put most of the body weight atop the existing sofa, so the extension would just have to support the legs. Although actually, it would have to support all of your weight temporarily because people will kneel down on the extension first in the process of getting on the bed to lay down.

I'm not sure if I could store the extension under the couch, however, since my heater is there (I have a 2720SL). I'd have to take a look at it closer. I believe the heater in the 3326 is mounted in the cabinet, so that's not an issue for you.

Dave