I never thought I would spend a Saturday afternoon arguing with my partner about a piece of foam. But there we were, standing in our 42-square-meter apartment, holding a surprisingly heavy wedge of polyurethane that was supposed to save our social life. We had a problem. Every time friends visited from out of town, we either pumped up an air mattress that hissed all night or gave up the couch and slept on the floor ourselves. Neither option worked. The air mattress sagged in the middle by 3 a.m. The floor left my hips feeling like I had been punched. What we needed was a proper sleeping surface that did not announce itself as a bed during the day. That is when I started looking at decorative molding not as trim on the walls, but as a trick for the furniture itself.

Our space is narrow. The living room doubles as a dining area and, on bad days, a storage closet for my bicycle. Adding a bulky guest bed was out of the question.