DIY Project: Trundle Guest Bed

As I've mentioned before, I'm currently redoing my office. My old office was a pretty boring space, built for studying, and studying alone. Since I'm not in school anymore, I've wanted to evolve my space to better suit my current needs. One of them being the need for a guest bed (or, preferably, two). We're having a lot of overseas guests coming to stay this year (yay!), the first set of which are scheduled to arrive in a couple of weeks. The air mattress we usually squeeze into my office to accommodate overnight house guests basically renders the entire room useless for anything besides sleeping on said mattress, and I'm so sick of it. So, spurred on by the shrinking window of time before soon-decending guests, I started making plans for my new office.

I decided upon adding a daybed, and I really wanted a trundle for it as well, to get two twin-sized guest beds. I found tons of daybeds with trundles online, none of which I wanted in my office. Then I found this daybed at World Market, and absolutely loved it.

It was just the thing I was looking for; nice quality, solid wood, sturdy, it fits a twin mattress, and it's gorgeous. To make it even better, it was on sale, and half the price of the other daybeds I'd seen online, and those had been made of cheap composite board. While it does fits a twin mattress, it didn't come with a trundle. But I got it anyways.

Then I started hunting for a freestanding trundle, to fit underneath the daybed. Yeah... that proved to be quite the challenge. They were all either too long, too high, too short, too ugly, or too expensive. Exasperated with my Goldilocks dilemma, I though 'why not make one?'. I mean, how hard can it really be? Well, as it turns out, not very.

I used Ana White's 'Trundle for Bed or Storage' plans to build my trundle, which made the whole project ridiculously easy, since her plans include a comprehensive list of supplies needed, the tools to use, where & how to measure for a correct fit, and a complete cut-list. Perfect! One lengthy trip to my local home improvement store for supplies, and I was ready to begin.

The build was super quick and easy, and quickly followed by sanding, priming, and painting. And then the worst part, waiting. My daybed is a blueish-gray tone, which I doubted I could recreate very well, so I decided not to try. Instead I painted the trundle in this white & gray striped pattern. Then all that was left was adding the hardware. Piece of cake!

Here is my newly finished trundle:

I'm still waiting for a lot more pillows to be delivered, as well as the new mattress for the trundle (trundle is pictured with a placeholder). I got the new mattress for the daybed at Target. It's a 10" memory foam mattress, and the quality actually exceeded my expectations. It's SO COMFORTABLE, and for $200, a total steal! The mattress that will go in the trundle is another memory foam, also from Target, but it's only 6" due to the lesser clearance. It will go all the way up to the bottom of the daybed, and not leave that gap that is there now. These pictures are a bit awkwardly angled, I know. I'm trying to keep the rest of the room, which isn't done yet, under wraps still. Better pictures will come with the full office reveal.

Total Cost (not incl. mattress):

$150

It could have been made much cheaper, using cheaper wood than what I did, for somewhere between $50-$100 according to Ana White's calculations. Still, it was several hundred dollars cheaper than the cheapest store-version. So, by making this trundle myself, I got a trundle with a mattress for the same price as a store-bought, lesser quality trundle without a mattress, with very little work. Not bad.

All things considered, I am really happy with the outcome of this project. It was cheap, super quick, and really easy. I was a bit worried the trundle would look flimsy & obviously homemade, but it looks really good, and fits perfectly under my daybed. Even though it's a couple of inches shorter than the standard twin, it still fits a twin mattress with ease. Although, I'm thinking any tall friends hoping to be future house guests should call shotgun for the daybed asap.

Thanks Ana, for the excellent plans!

EDITED TO ADD:

We have gotten so much use out of this daybed/trundle combo, but the one negative I wanted to mention is that the trundle bed can't be raised, to make a double bed. It's probably not a big deal if you're using it for your kids, but a few couples that have slept over have mentioned that having their partner sleep down on the floor, out of sight, was strange, and I wish there was a way to add folding legs that would allow us to raise the trundle when in use, like some models I've seen at several furniture stores. Just something to keep in mind for anyone coming by this post in the hunt for a daybed/trundle combo. The option to raise the trundle is a great feature.