Whats the deal with couches these days? The arm to butt space ratio is WAY out of wack. We found this out when our family grew to 5 members and our tiny loveseat in our tiny TV room didn’t have enough room for 5 butts…but only because the arms of the loveseat took up at least one, if not two, butts worth of space. We figured out that the Ikea Karlstad couch (plus the chaise for lounge-ability) would just fit in our room and had enough space for all 5 of us. The couch has arms appropriately sized for an average human arm, which is the most frequent use case for couches in our house. I watched Craigslist like a hawk and ended up scoring the EXACT unit we wanted, almost brand new (was in a family’s vacation home) for $200 and located less than a mile from our house. Well, it seems that the poofy, luxury couches that come in most RVs are designed for Popeye’s big arms and tiny butt just like the sticks and bricks counterparts.
The previous owners of our trailer had the same realization and threw out the couch in the living room and the one in the bunk room. In the latter they threw a mattress on the floor for their son and used the bunk above for storage. In the living room they put a mattress on milk crates (which acted as storage) and with some big comfy pillows made it into a day bed. We liked the idea so we sort of copied it. But I built a simple frame to hold a foam mattress and made it high enough to fit some storage bins neatly underneath. Its a super simple design that was inspired by one I saw on Instructables. I built one 3 or 4 years ago for my daughter and its worked great.
I’m not sure how often we’ll all want to sit on the “couch” at the same time, but if we do it’ll be no problem. And if we have a visitor, the guest bed is ready to go!
Below is the one I built for the bunk room. I still need to trim the foam to fit the non-standard twin space. But, its very light weight, cheap, sturdy and functional!!
