Mostly I’ve just been publishing the ideas that have worked.  But this time I’m putting in a failure.  It’s close, but just not quite there.   I had several objectives for this project.  I wanted a bed that John could raise up himself so that he could read if he wanted to.  Then, I wanted John to be able to lower it himself when he was ready for sleep.  Finally, I wanted it to be under $100 or pretty close to that.

Because John uses a bunk bed, I was able to easily add a $20 steel bar with pulley to the bottom of the top bunk.  For John’s bed I cut out two pieces of plywood and hinged them together so that the mattress would bend properly (about another $20).  I used a strap we had laying around to strap the mattress to the plywood.  Then, the big expenditure was an electrical winch found at Harbor Freight on sale for around $50.

I discovered several problems with this set up:
1.  The winch is crazy loud !!  I can just imagine John thinking.  Ah, I think I’m ready to sleep now.  Guess I’ll lower the bed…  VVVRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH !!!!!
2.  I’d have to figure out someway to hold the winch in place.  I can’t imagine bolting it to the floor… that seems a little extreme.
3.  John’s fingers aren’t strong enough to push the button for the winch.  There exists a wireless control for it — if I could fix the above problems, maybe I would try to see if I could get the control to work with it.