I’m not the kind of guy who shrinks from a little sweat equity. If I think I can assume a task rather than pay someone else to do it, 9 out of 10 times I’ll take the shot. The parameters of my decision making are quite simple: Cost versus time and stress.

For example, I’m not going to pay someone to paint a room, install a ceiling fan, or swap out the air filter on my Kia Kona. Heck, when I needed to replace the shed at my former home, I built a 8×10 building practically by myself. I’ll stop short of describing myself as fearless in such matters, but my hate for spending money to pay someone else to do things that I’m entirely capable of doing far outweighs any reservations I might have about my ability to complete a job.

My townhouse provides three bedrooms. Clearly, the master, one is the largest with a walk-in closet and an attached bathroom. Of the two remaining bedrooms, one is significantly bigger than the other. I don’t often entertain out-of-town guests. Since moving to South Carolina 18 years ago, I’ve probably averaged fewer than 12 nights a year housing out-of-town visitors. With that statistic in mind, I decided to make the smaller of the two remaining rooms the “guest” or “green” room, as I have named it. The larger room I pressed into service as my office. It also houses my NordicTrak and weight bench. (Yes, I use both nearly every day!)

Because a guest room of mine is so underutilized, I just couldn’t justify filling it up with guestroom furniture. Moreover, it has built-in shelves that further tighten the dimensions. My solution was a Murphy bed. You know, a bed that folds up into a wall unit when not in use. This allows the space to transform into a pseudo laundry room with a big, foldable clothes rack and an ironing board when the bed isn’t in use.

A bit of research revealed that I could purchase a Murphy bed kit far cheaper than a preassembled one. In fact, the price difference ran somewhere from $400 to $1,000. I picked a kit from Wayfair.com. I’ve purchased several items from this online retailer over the years and have always been highly satisfied. Fair price, free shipping, rapid delivery, solid customer service, what else could you want? I would soon find out. Boy, would I ever.

The kit arrived about a week after placing the order. It came in two 8-ft long boxes that were roughly 1-ft wide by 8-inches deep. Although I was able to drag them off the front stoop, through the door, and into the entryway, there was no chance I was somehow going to wrestle these things up the stairs to the second floor. Besides, I had moved into this townhouse only a month earlier and had bigger fish to fry. The boxes remained stacked in my entryway for over a month. (This will be somewhat important later.)

Once ready to spring into action, I opened both boxes where they lay and located the assembly directions. Directions! What huckster of fairytales determined these silly ass, pathetic drawings were directions? More detailed instructions came with the last pillow I bought. There were easily over 100 wooden pieces, scores of screws, fasteners, small wooden dowels, and other random flotsam. The instruction booklet was simply a series of numbered drawings with no written directions, nor any indication of the orientation of the drawing, or even if you were looking at the front side or back side of the pieces in each drawing. Furthermore, I couldn’t locate more detailed instructions online, nor could I find an online video illustrating the assembly.

If I were made of less sturdy stuff, I would have curled up in a fetal position and bawled my eyes out.

Having pulled myself together, my game plan was to haul the pieces up the stairs to the guest room as I needed them, per my interpretation of the instructions. You’ve got to start somewhere, right? This worked fine in the early stages; however, as I plodded along, I found many of the different wooden parts looked remarkably alike. I began creating a pile of misidentified pieces in my office. I calculated that I made 60 or 70 round-trips up and down my 14 stairs during the two days of primary construction. A few of those were to get more tools from the garage.

At one point, I had to disassemble some 20 joints because the instructions didn’t specify which direction the section I was working on faced. I didn’t realize until I was halfway finished that the thing should have been reversed. This sort of misstep occurred to a lesser degree more than once. To reiterate, there were no written instructions. None, zero, zip, nada. Obviously, no one at Wayfair had ever attempted to assemble one of these monstrosities.

The first completed section was the wall unit into which the mattress platform folded. Because it was the size of a queen-size bed, I needed to get it out of the way. Why not go ahead, stand it up, and attach it to the wall? Seemed logical. I couldn’t just lean it against the wall because of the danger it would fall over.

Before moving in, I put new carpet on the stairs, hall, and the two smaller bedrooms. I always wanted the sort of carpet that you sink into; consequently, when I chose the carpet, I also picked a much thicker-than-standard pad. This was not a firm base on which to stand the shell. A trip to Home Depot for steel brackets that I used to attach the shell to the wall (an hour wasted) put me back in business. (More about this later.)

As I began assembling the mattress platform, I realized that the two gas struts that served to slowly expand when lowering the platform and then retract when raising it were missing. Usually, an online retailer’s (and most brick-and-mortar stores, for that matter) customer service will accept the return of a defective product, but won’t become involved in fixing the product. When such issues arise, the manufacturer must step up and provide whatever warranty fixes are appropriate.

A check of Wayfair’s return policy provides unconditional returns only within 30 days of delivery. Even if I was willing to unassemble everything, repackage it, and somehow haul it to UPS or wherever, I was at least two weeks beyond the limit of Wayfair’s return policy. All righty then. I began researching the manufacturer Wildon Home. A storied name in furniture making, no? Maybe it’s located in Hickory, North Carolina. Dream on.

A little more digging revealed that Wildon Home is a private label owned by…wait for it…Wayfair. The Jynna Queen Murphy Bed I purchased was cranked out in – I hesitate to call it a factory – a factory in Vietnam. I guess when you lose a war to a backwater country, one of the consequences is getting hosed with a crappy Murphy bed kit. But, I digress.

Armed with this information, hat in hand, I reached out to Wayfair customer service. In all my dealings with Wayfair, I had never engaged the customer service (complaint) department. A very nice representative answered the phone. I opened, revealing my awareness that I was outside the 30-day timeframe. I continued that I didn’t want to return or exchange the kit, but just needed the two gas struts. She offered no pushback on the 30-day issue. She did ask for the part number, which I provided. She then asked me to email a photo of the parts list page from the instructions with the missing parts circled. I complied. She said she was on it.

I received email confirmation that the replacement parts were on their way.

Five days later, I received another 8-foot box, which I dragged inside. It contained half the parts for the complete Murphy bed, including the two gas struts. This was also the box with the five pounds of hardware and another set of instructions.

Apparently, between the fulfillment of my original order and packing the replacement box, someone attempted to address the non-instructional instructions because the new directions included QR codes for several of the assembly steps. When accessed, the codes provided a 5- to 10-second video illustrating that step of the process. Wow. Now we’re getting somewhere. Yeah, right.

At this point, the assembly was roughly 60% completed. Of the remaining steps, there were maybe a dozen QR codes. Utilizing them only provided minimal information. What they showed was a close-up of whichever two elements were being joined, surrounded on two or three sides by pairs of bare feet. No spoken instructions and no context providing any clue as to how this step contributed to the finished product. At least three or four of the videos were upside down. Although frustrated beyond words, I laughed every time I accessed a video.

Once completed, I attached the mattress platform to the shell. It raised and lowered effortlessly; however, I still needed to attach the gas struts, which was one of the final steps. When in the raised position, the bottom of the platform served as a finished front, giving the illusion of a piece of furniture. It also served as some degree of support for the mattress, which was not included.

There were now two issues in play. One: The struts arrived in their fully compressed form. When compressed, the only way to attach them to the inside of the shell was by pulling it away from the wall. So, I unscrewed the brackets from the wall and scooted the shell out to a point where I could get behind the unit and attach the struts. Two: However, when fully compressed, they were too short to connect to the shell and the platform. However,  when released to their full extension, they were too long to attach in the platform’s lowered position. Also, once released to their full extension, they were impossible to compress by hand. I can’t imagine I was the first to deal with this issue, but who knows? In any event, I couldn’t attach them.

I was done with Wayfair for this project. I didn’t want another box of pieces. Besides, any replacement struts would probably be the same. I jumped on Amazon and bought a pair of struts. Although a bit stiff, they operated satisfactorily. I spent just over $200 on a mattress, which arrived during the week or so of on-and-off assembly. I also Gerry-rigged two corner bathroom cabinets (also from Wayfair) as nightstands, attaching them to the shell.

Even with the mattress in place, the struts were so strong that they would pull the foot of the platform about two feet off the floor. After experimenting with round weight plates for dumbbells to counterbalance the struts, I finally landed on sandbags engineered to hold light stands and camera tripods in place to provide enough weight to hold down the platform when lowered.

The beta test came when a Florida gal pal visited. She offered rave reviews of the bed’s comfort after clocking two-nights sleep.

After her departure, I decided that I wanted to see for myself how it slept. I crawled into it and did my usual 15 or 20 minutes of reading before rolling onto my side to fall asleep. Without warning, there was a loud crack. Splintering, the platform under the mattress gave way, and I found my ass on the floor. Are you kidding me?

Yep, the platform base broke into pieces. Now, I was determined to make this thing functional. God bless Amazon. I found what its manufacturer called a metal boxspring that was nearly the exact size to fit between the platform and the mattress. I then located round adjustable supports to slide beneath the lowered platform and the floor.

Today, I have a fully functional and safe-to-use Murphy Bed. The eventual cost?

Murphy Bed Kit         $1,100

Wall Brackets            $    15

Gas Struts                 $    26

Steel Box Spring      $    159

Floor Supports          $    20

Misc Extras                $    50

Total Bed Cost          $1,370

Night Stands             $   180

Mattress                     $  201

Total Project              $1,751