Hidden Doors... Useful designs needed

Hey everyone

Long time lurker, 1st time poster. I am looking for designs anyone on this forum may have for hidden doors and such. I have pretty much killed google off looking for designs, but they all seem to be the same one. I will be buying a home soon, and would like to put a hidden area in my home, for a gear and gun room.

Thanks for any help.

You could always select a room such as a pantry, large closet, or bathroom and wall it off. For a door you could make an opening on a lower surface with hinges that swing inward which wouldn't be obvious to the casual observer.

Naturally you'd have to make the contact points for the hatch as close as possible, perhaps camouflaged by paneling seams or wallpaper.

In a former home I owned, I constructed a false wall in an unused bedroom with a 4'X 10' space behind it. Access was through the side of the closet with a sliding track door made out of plywood painted to match the interior walls. It was a great place to hide valuables when we went on vacation.

thanks for the reply, Lloyd those are some excellent ideas, may have to give them a try. I was thinking more along the lines of say a bookcase or such, but your ideas sound much more doable.

How about a kitchen cabinet you can crawl into?
With a false wall in the back, and poison chimicals in the front.

Go to www.survivalcenter.com then click on underground and above ground shelters and scroll. Good luck.

When I was a kid, my mom's bedroom closet had a hatch in the ceiling that led to the attic.

Working from that idea, you could partition off a section of attic above your bedroom and make the entrance to it in your closet. Just thinking out loud this could become a saferoom as well. Maybe leave a window there with a roll out ladder for escape. There are endless possibilities here. I look forward to reading your decisions.

reply to post by the4bb4l4h



a 'doorway' is generally large enough to walk through.
an 'access' can be as small an opening as one can get their head through.

there are things called 'hidden hinges' (usually used for cabinets)
a few are 'spring loaded' and use magnetic parts to keep the door closed...
but when one pushes against the 'door' the spring allows the door to open
against the magnet force holding the door closed~ and unrecognized as an access/door~

i think that cameoflage is more important than a rigidly secure doorway,
otherwise a steel-vault door with a electronic keypad for entry would suffice. !


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

shadow watcher;
i came to know those ceiling access panels as 'scuttle holes'....
where one could shimmy up to the attic,
but that kind of access was not recommended for using the attic
as a storage place as those 'scuttle holes' were about 24"X24"
or a little smaller,,, and you couldn't get much (of any size) up there
in the attic





[edit on 19-1-2008 by St Udio]

thanks again for all of the replies, lots of great ideas. I agree that camouflage is better than rigidity an idea like this. I currently have scuttle holes in the home i am in now, but they arent really quick access.

I knew a guy who walled off a portion of his basement; it had been originally constructed larger than the permit provided for, and he just walled off the extra portion. The access was actually under the stairs that led to the basement. You descended the stairs, and then lifted up a hinged part of the steps and walked through them into the hidden area.

Another thing to consider is not secret rooms exactly, but a shortcut that connects different parts of the house. For instance two closets that back up against each other, but are approached from other areas. A master bedroom closet that backs up to the entryway coat closet could lead to a quick getaway while intruders are pounding on the bedroom door. And you are out the hallway closet and out the front door if you want.

You want a "gear and gun room" in a home you have not yet purchased? If you haven't even decided on the home yet, I personally would look for a home with a finished basement and a bathroom already completed. The bathroom door can be converted however you like. Typical finished basement paneling is full of seams so camouflage wouldn't be as tricky. The bathroom can then also serve as a shelter for whatever situation you can think up.

The best place to hide things is in plain sight.

As far as the latch mechanics and whatnot, all those designs you've probably already encountered will probably work best.

A hidden area..ie..room or just hidden spaces for gear, equipment and such.

I have built a hidden space under the space below the sink in a girlfriends home. The cabinet on which the bathroom sink sits..the base is a pedistal. I removed the front cover of the base and attached magnetic clips and thier opposites on the inside of the pedistal base. Just a single board and four clips. This gave her about a five ro six inch tall space in her bathroom in which she put a fireproof box with some valuables..papers etc.
Also I installed for her one of those false wall sockets...you just remove the wall socket cover plate to gain access to this small hidden spot.

There are lots of books out on this dicipline. Most off them not in the public librarys but only limited by your knowlege, understanding, and skills.

I saw a bookshelf at a friends house ..it had a false end on it about four to five inchs thick. It also had key lock device hidden behind a fire extinguisher. The lock opened the bookshelf end and iniside was a pump .22 rifle and a 12 gauge shotgun both loaded. Ammunition too. This adaption had been stained to match the bookshelf. You had to be looking hard to notice the false end on it.

One of the coolest ideas I have ever heard for hiding guns was a water heater in a persons garage. IT was a brand new water heater. I had false piping going into the walls complete with shut off valves. The back of the heater had been cut out and spaces furnished inside the hard jacket ..for several guns/rifles and ammo. When the guns were inside the water heater was rotated back around and the piping fitted into false holes in the wall of the garage. This would take some skill to accomplish but it could be done.

None the less ..do your homework and work on your skills. Whole rooms are tricky depending on how big is your home and how much stuff you want to hide behind them. You have to do such a room in a manner that leaves no Pee Pee tracks showing that people enter and exit such a set up. ..regularly...like cutting a new trail through the woods.

Doc Strangecrafts idea of ingress and egress through rooms or walls of a home is a good one for safety reasons in his scenerio. Thanks Doc for that concept.

Orangetom

Friends have told me I will have to bury my barrels of wheat to avoid soldiers confiscating them or people stealing them.

Any other easier ideas for hiding them?

Somebody said the best hiding place is in plain sight. What do you mean by that?

Hi Salt,

You could put a plywood top on it bigger than the barrel and use it for a end table. Depends on the size of the barrels. Or space two about four foot apart with a board between them and make a shelf out of them even stacking them to make a bookcase. Use them to support your box springs and matress to make a bed out of them. If you Bury food items, there are a few things to consider, Water, pests and accessibility. If it takes you three hours to go outside to dig up a barrel to get some food out of it, Its not easily accessible and you could draw attention to yourself. The neighbors wonder why you dig up part the yard every 2 weeks just to bury it and return two weeks later.

As far as hidden rooms any imaginable designs are feasible. Depends on your carpentry skills and the location of your hidden room.

Hope this helps.

Originally posted by Salt of the Earth
Somebody said the best hiding place is in plain sight. What do you mean by that?

I mean people look for things that are hidden. They ignore things that look like they are where and how they are supposed to be. It is irregularities and abnormalities that attract attention. When someone looks for something that is hidden, they look in common hiding places. If something is "hidden" in a manner that appears completely normal or routine, it doesn't even get a passing glance.

So apply that to my suggestion in a finished basement. If you place a bookcase in front of a door, someone looking for a door is naturally going to look behind the bookcase. But if your basement walls are comprised of paneled segments, the true door will appear as any other panel and will go unnoticed.

These same practices can be applied to just about anything. From hiding things in vehicles to hiding yourself among others. It's just manipulation of the way the human brain processes what is observed. You can take it a step further into how the eye works, but that's for another thread.

www.instructables.com...!/

I found this to be an excellent "secret storage" idea, that could be adapted to a much larger scale - I especially like the use of the magnetic child lock, which you could hide in any random object - your lock and your key both completely invisible.

reply to post by the4bb4l4h


www.hiddenpassageway.com...

The entrance to my old bunker was situated under an outdoor outhouse, with the stink stack at the top serving as an unassuming air intake. I kept it looking and smelling like an old dirty # house (i never actually used it) It was built on a sliding latch system that would expose the steel door when an L shaped plank was removed. I have since mothballed that bunker and dug a new one. (not telling what the entrance is) But it is far more elaborate then the one above, i was having problems in the winter time with freezing and expansion.

I have a friend that has a very elaborate entrance to his grain and storage house, it is an old well and it is ingenious in the way that it can be flooded to block access and then be drained, all while maintaining a perfect seal.

reply to post by Noah-What


I am a little confused about the goal of this thread. If its about hiding your stuff from citizens and looters, then all these responses are pretty decent. But if its about hiding from soldiers during confiscation... NO WAY.

Think people! Dogs and high tech equipment.

High Tech (scanners, sensors, probes):
I dont care how crafty you are, your camo shelves, fake ends, hidden doors and rooms, couches actually made of grain buckets, barrels under tables or in crawl spaces, etc will be completely worthless. They will all be found, ALL of it.

Dogs
Burying seems like the only option if you want property not to be found. But even then, it must be completely undetectable by dogs, and completely water and pest proof. As mentioned, accessibility is an issue. Might just have to live with that.

How to accomplish this? I have no idea. But I sure was hoping to find out by reading this thread. Please keep the ideas coming, but by golly, think a few steps ahead now.

Here is my primer:
-Figure out where to buy scentless plastic
-Figure out how deep to bury
-Figure out a location (perhaps not even on your property?)
-Figure out how to drain water, or completely seal the items
-Remember that the ground needs time to settle and grow grass and weeds to look untouched

Ideas? Resources? Warrants new thread?

I bought a door from “Hide A Door” in Humble, Texas. The door was great, it hid a closet in a studio in D.C.

The customer service however left much to be desired. I paid some 200+ to have it delivered. I lived on the 2nd floor of a building downtown. The door was delivered while I was away on business. I found it in a crate in the lobby of my building. I’d asked them to contact my building manager specifically, to have him let them in to my apt. and leave it there. When I contacted them, they said the delivery person that worked for the company with whom they’d contracted, had only one man there to deliver this 300 pound package..so they simply left it. I had to have my two brothers do what I’d paid 200 dollars to do. Upon complaint to Hide A Door, I was told that I’d receive at LEAST a partial refund. I called and called and called and got the run around. There are TONS of companies that sell these doors, do not buy from them. Co-owner Krystal Strong is not reputable.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but dogs have to be trained to smell specific things, ie, drugs, bombs, etc. It's quite unlikely that dogs will be trained to just smell plastic, given it's ubiquitous nature in our society, so as long as the plastic hasn't been used for something else that DOES have strong scent, I can't really see it being detectable.