In senior year, I made a winch-powered loft for my dorm room. My dorm room was the largest on the floor, but I wanted more space because I also wanted a king-size bed to sleep on. Given that the bed would have taken up 40% of the footprint of the room, I still wanted to have some living room. I devised an adjustable loft that could raise the platform of the bed up to near the ceiling when not in use ("living room mode") and lower the platform to a suitable height from the ceiling when I wanted to sleep ("sleep mode"). I also had too many clothes for the dorm room closet, so the motors would have to be able to hold my mattress, the platform, the comforters and about 100 lbs of clothing attached to a "walk-under" closet at the bottom.
Design took only a week or two, and procuring materials was easy since my dorm had lots of bolts, screws, 2x4's, 2x6's, 2x8's, and 4x4's up for grabs for free. I made sure to CAD everything from parts I knew I would have access to, and the only material cost came from winches, pulleys and concrete anchors.
The first step was to CAD the project to make sure I could do it, and find a place to put the loft.
As you can see, the bed takes up an enormous amount of space, and without the loft the room would be barely useable.
My dorm room did not have concrete ceilings to attach anything from the top, sadly. So I had to improvise. If one thing doesn't work, i've learned to turn it upside down (do the opposite) and it should work! So I made sure I could safely anchor into the floor and I drilled and anchored concrete bits into the floor and attached the winches to the floor. From the floor, the winch would wrap around pulleys on the top of the loft bracing, putting all forces into the columns of the loft support brace. Then when the cord retracted, the platform would lift up towards the pulleys (the ceiling) and the bed would raise!
Here we have a picture of the "living room mode." Turns out it's very hard to get a picture of the complete project when the room is so small, but the idea is there. I had a couch, my closet and a projector screen set up under the loft so I had a fully functioning "living room" for company. And some mood lighting for movie nights.
In its lowered position, I could easily hop up onto the bed, and I was far enough from the ceiling that I could sit up easily in bed. I was still several feet off the ground, but my clothing never touched the ground. And I personally like sleeping further from the ground.
