Beds
Buy and sell beds in Panama.
Beds in Panama are bought by mattress size, and shops still use the old labels: a twin is a 3/4 and a full is a 4/6, while queen and king keep their English names. A carpenter’s wooden frame, an upholstered queen with a tall headboard and a bunk bed for the children’s room are listed side by side, new and pre-owned. Before you weigh up the style, find out which mattress the frame was built for. A queen made in Colombia takes a wider, shorter mattress than the queen sold here, and that only shows once the bed is made up.
Wooden frames, box springs and bunk beds:
the first question is what holds the mattress up. A wooden frame with side rails and slats carries it on its own, and a platform bed swaps the slats for a solid deck. A box spring is an upholstered base on short legs that many people pair with a standalone headboard and no frame at all. Upholstered beds wrap the frame and a tall headboard in fabric or velvet. In children’s rooms, a bunk bed, two 3/4 beds stacked, and a trundle bed that rolls out from under a single both save floor space. Nightstands from the same set are listed under side tables, and the matching wardrobe under cabinets. Within each type, the material decides how the bed ages: pine is cheap and light, hardwood heavy and lasting, metal quick to strip down but prone to squeaking, and flat-pack particleboard the worst at surviving a move.
Bed sizes in Panama, where a twin is a 3/4 and a full a 4/6:
shops sell to US mattress sizes but still tag them the old way. Twin and full are both 190 cm long; the queen is 152 × 203 cm and the king 193 × 203 cm. The trap is a frame or mattress from Colombia, where a queen is 160 × 190 cm: same name, wider and shorter, so a local queen mattress shifts from side to side on it and hangs over the foot. On any used bed, measure the inside of the frame between the rails rather than trusting the label, and remember that a queen or king needs a centre rail with a leg under it, or the mattress sags in the middle.
Pine 3/4 frames against upholstered queens:
a plain wooden 3/4 frame is around $130 new, which leaves a used pine one very little margin before a buyer simply orders a new one. An upholstered queen with a tall headboard runs from about $750 to $1,000 new and drops hardest once used, because fabric keeps every stain and buyers worry about seams they cannot see into. Hardwood frames hold their value best: scratches sand out and joints can be re-glued.
Slats, centre legs and headboard seams on a used bed:
push the foot of the frame sideways. If it racks, the joints are loose or the bolt holes have worn oval. Look for cracked slats and odd replacements, and on a queen or king check that the centre leg is still there. Particleboard beds rarely survive a second assembly because the cam fittings tear out of the board, so ask how many times it has been moved. On upholstered headboards and box springs, run a torch along the seams and the underside for the dark specks and pale shed skins of bed bugs; under a wooden frame, fine pellets that look like sand mean drywood termites. On a bunk bed, the guard rail should run the full length of the top bunk, the ladder should sit firm and the top slats should be fixed in their brackets.
Listing a bed you are about to take apart:
give the inside width and length between the rails, and write the size both ways, 3/4 or twin, so nobody turns up with the wrong mattress. Say what it is made of, whether a mattress or box spring goes with it and how old that is, and whether it is already dismantled. Photograph the joints, the slats and the underside, because that is what a careful buyer asks to see before driving in from Colón or Penonomé. Before you unbolt anything, mark each rail with tape and put every bolt in one bag. A bed that arrives labelled goes back together in an evening; one that arrives as a pile of loose timber often stays that way.