This is kinda neat, www.hiddenpassageways.com Anyone have anything like this in your house? I think it would be a cool way to access an office, or even home theater area.
Fun stuff. Lived in a B&B in DC for about 6 months a few years back.. it was full of secret passages and rooms. Stayed in one room where you had to walk through a wall, up a secret stairway, pop out of a painting on the other end, take a left through a painting on the wall and pop out of a mirror on the other side, make a few turns, head halfway up the stairway with shelves along the right side full of old albums, and enter the room through the secret door behind one of the shelves. Referred a coworker to the place and she stayed one night and left cuz she couldn't find her room when she got back the next day -R
And furthermore, how would you get back up? It'd have to be a secret entrance to a normal room downstairs, or you'd have to have a second passage to get out (with any dignity).
Like that Bud commercial where the guy flips the wall around and it looks like a table and chairs instead of the fridge for when people come over to party.. then in the apt next door the guys say "LOOK! The magic fridge is back!" and they grab all the beer they can before it "disappears" again.. LOL. It would be neat to have secret rooms.. I don't think we have any. Hmm..
That is so cool! If I visit D.C. again I would like to stay there. I can't help but think it might be a little creepy but that sort of thing intrigues me.
That site screams "hack!" to me. They show these animations, basically meaning "stuff we'd like you to pay us to do, but we've never actually done before, so we will show you how we picture it being without actually showing the fit and finish". On the videos of "actual" things they've done, the two planters recessed in the wall looks very amateurish. It looks like they have to wiggle the plant thing a bit to make it actuate, then the picture goes up sooooo slowly needlessly, and the control for the other moving planter recess seems to be a PITA to operate and the planter shakes and shimmies as it moves. They don't seem to have the necessary skills to effect smooth motion. On the bookcase/wall, its so obviously a door. I mean, it looks like a doorframe and you can see the transition beneath the door to the other room. Maybe at a quick glance its passable but its obvious in a video shot from 10-20 feet away, so I an imagine how fake it looks up close.
That's the one stayed at the Hilton on 16th and K for about 8 months before discovering some of the more interesting places to be... After about 6 months of staying there, H offered me a permanent room but I changed projects and got something closer to the office. Strangelove: check it out next time you're in town www.omansion.com be sure to read the room descriptions. -R
A neighbor from my youth in Mass. lived in an old "Salt Box" from the 1700's that was used as a stop on the Underground Railroad. It had two secret rooms, one of which was accessed by pressing a panel on the Wainscot on one room - this one was big enough to be an office in modern times, and they kept the mechanism in place. The other was in the attic. Neat stuff, but scary house with lots of STRANGE sounds.....like hard soled shoes running (and I mean running) up and down a wooden staircase in the middle of the night. All of their staircases were carpeted at the time.
When I was about 12 we had supper with a family that tricked their house out as a hobby. 50 year old 3 story large house that looked normal all the way around, but had all kinds of secret passages, rooms, and tricks. Giving the tour they showed everything, we think. I thought it was pretty cool at 12.
The other day, for the first time in nearly a year, my wife ventured into a secret room we have. I call it "the kitchen."
i am in the home building industry. when i built my home, i put in several secret rooms. the main one is a room that joing together two bedrooms through seperate bookcases that are in each room. the other is more of a hidden access in the closets, which is used to store all of our christmas amungst other things. the hinged bookcases are not as easily built as you would think. you have to beef up the hinges so they can support the weight of the books and still swing freely. basically, it is a pain in the ass to build them and get then to line up properly. the staircase i think is bogus based on the way the video shows. you would have to have a large counterbalance to raise and lower the staircase without using a cable and pulley, as it would be visable. you can build secret areas with relative ease, it is disquising them that creates the problem.
Would it be possible to use small hydroulic lifts on the side's of the stairwell? I think i'd be more into a bookcase or something of that nature as opposed to the stairs.
sure, it could be done, but keep in mind the stairs would have to hinge at the top and that hinge would have to support a good amount of weight. it reminds me of the munsters home. there are far better ways to create a secret place than the stair idea.
