Being relatively minimalist in our leanings, Praew and I have been enjoying the idea of downsizing our home to a tiny 12 sq meter (130 sq ft) floating house.

As mentioned before, we are cheating more than a little bit by moving much of our living space outside. The above is only the inside area and doesn’t include the partially outdoor bathroom, and the plentiful balcony space where we will have the kitchen and will probably do most of our eating.

Nonetheless, 12 sq meters is really really small. A queen size bed will take up half the entire house for all practical purposes. So rather than downsize our bed, we decided to get creative. The solution we ended up with is a bed that rolls out under the balcony during the day when not in use.

This has been one of the last parts of the construction of the floating house left to be completed. But over the past few days, they have mostly finished it.

The construction was pretty basic with a welded steel frame and a detachable wooden panel that covers the top of the storage area and serves the purpose of the floor of the balcony:

Once the top piece was finished, it was mounted on hinges with a choke underneath to help support it when lifted:

It was designed to use 2 chokes, but we seem to have miscalculated and ended up with ones that are 2x too strong. So one is enough. We might change it out to a lower spec one at some point, but it works okay for now.

Being able to lift up the top is a useful thing for cleaning. Given that we are rolling our bed in there, it is pretty important to keep it clean inside. The wood workers did a great job of creating an interlocking groove on the right side so any water that might spill on the balcony won’t wet the bed, so to speak.

And the elevated area also adds some functional possibilities like seating and eating areas.

The elevated area is extended to around the corner for practical safety reasons. If you are climbing down a step and trip, you should fall to the ground, not into the pond. 😉

And on a house this small, anywhere we can find extra storage will probably be a wonderful thing.