Sonoma Woodcraft

We got a no-​frills wallbed for our studio apartment. We love it. This is a small, family-​run company. They do great work and they are really helpful in answering questions. We had a lot of problem-​solving around where to put the bed in our apartment due to having so many doors (Jake figured out a way to mount the bed over a superfluous closet door– why does one closet need 3 doors?), and how to get the bed in our 1920’s elevator (they built the bed box in 2 pieces instead of one). They also answered questions for our property manager to help us get the go-​ahead to install a wallbed. For a reasonable extra fee, they did the installation. There is a long wait because they make the beds one at a time but we got ours about a month earlier than they initially quoted us– which was great! Now it feels like we have a whole extra room.

Jake aka Sonoma Woodcraft designs and builds BEAUTIFUL furniture and Exquisite Murphy Beds and Murphy Desks. Good stuff!!!

The Internet is a pretty amazing place, if it is even a place at all. There is a lot of misleading information, dead-​ends, and wrong turns. There are scams, there are pages of self-​vanities (like my blog — check it out!), and there is endless gorilla-​style advertising (thank you pop-​up blocker). But the Internet connects people. The Internet helps people find other people. It allows us to share information in ways that we could not easily do before.
So my wife and I noticed that since moving to our new place, we had not been having all that many visitors. Particularly, we noticed that folks who came once were not returning. Now we were hesitant to attribute this to Josie, our kitty who loves (and primarily lives in) the guest room, because she is really sweet. The room itself is nicely sized, but the bedding arrangement made us suspicious. We had gotten rid of a futon couch that was actually quite comfy and replaced it with a cool inflatable mattress and stand device, which is nice for 10 minutes, but frankly my wife and I never tried it longer than that. So we had a brain storm and realized we needed a Murphy bed. A Murphy bed is one of the beds that folds up into the wall that is central to the plot of most TV comedies made in the 50’s. It seemed like the perfect plan. The design is very space efficient, it allows you to use a regular mattress, unlike a sleeper sofa, and I have always had a secret desire to get closed up in one of those things.
So we started looking around on the Internet and I found one could buy the hardware and plans for a nicely design bed for around $ 300. This seemed excellent, except in examining the plans, my wife was not too confident that she would end up with something other than a gigantic plywood box with a bed in it. Her idea was that it should look good, too. So the projects gets shelved, until she found Jake’s ad for custom Murphy beds on Craigslist.
Jake is a Sonoma County-​based cabinet and furniture maker. We checked out his website, contacted him, and closed the deal. We are now thrilled to have an amazingly beautiful armoire with matching bookshelves in our guest room. What is not obvious at first is that this craftsman-​style cherry armoire opens to become a lovely queen-​sized bed. The photos on the website are accurate, but his creations look way better in situ. We feel he delivered a very good value as the project came out more beautifully than we had imagined possible.