new bed for the motorhome

I am having a guest in 10 days. I have the mattress. I have torn out the dining booth and saved the materials. I want to re-purpose them for a bed base with storage under like Darren did on his RV project a while back. I know to set the hinge out the thickness of the mattress and I will get the lifts. So two questions, probably for Darren.

Make model source of the pistons? And how much room around the mattress did you leave for making the bed up? My mattress measures 38" wide, 73" long and 8" thick.

And I'm gonna have to go at Allen speed to get this done before Liz gets here.

Got the lifts from the place below, I based it off their chart in Red on that page, BLK-SMALL is what my order had on it.

http://www.hatchlift.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=60&product_id=60

Extra space wasn't an issue really as their were captains chairs on the front side, but the platform was an inch longer than the mattress to allow for blankets and sheets. The mattress over hung the front edge of the platform.

"The mattress over hung the front edge of the platform."
Really? By how much? I was going to make it 38". I have to measure the back panels from the dining set as I was going to use those as ends.

The height is already set from the dining benches. Basically, this is just the dining set stretched out and with a new piece of plywood for the base for the mattress to set on. Think 1/2" is thick enough. I know 3/4" is, but I was thinking about the weight to lift it to get at the storage space. The dining seats were only 3/8" plywood but not nearly as long or wide.

Also will be used as a sofa with bolsters and pillows.

I only let the mattress hang over about an inch on the front so that your calves weren't against the platform trim. You don't have to do the overhang, was just my preference to do it that way. I used 1/2" on my project, I did do a 1/2" sub frame which was glued and stapled to to the bottom of the ply, but really was to build up to give the hinge some surface to screw to.

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