Ideas on those Squampster front bunks:
- The bottom bunk is on the 'floor', but the dropped footwell is right next to it so it's a suitable height for sitting/lounging, but they're looking at the knees of people in the dinette. The practical problem is that a bunk wide enough to sleep on is undesirably wide to sit on in real comfort - no problem for kids though, unless you're strict about no feet on the upholstery.....
- Grant's original Campster design has exactly the sort of hinged-bunk backrest that's being described.
- I would certainly suggest building framing into the front and side walls to take bunk supports at mid-height, so that the three-bunker could later be converted to a two-bunker.
- It's quite easy to design a bunk that can be lifted off its supports on the wall and repositioned on another support. The downside is that the bunk and mattress will weigh a bit so they're not that easy to lift in a confined space.
- Combining repositionable bunks with one that hinges down as a backrest is very hard - in the backrest position, the bunk sticks up through the next level of supports, so the support design and build becomes very complex.
- One way round the problem would be to put these bunk latches on all four corners of each bunk and have multiple holes in the sidewalls for all the different combinations of positions that are wanted.
(I'm not 100% sure I'd trust these without some way of locking them firmly in the extended position. And they
will get heads banged on them!)
- Simply hinging the upper bunks on the front wall and lifting them up on strings and hooks during the day might be the simplest way:
Andrew