I was watching Property Ladder the other day, the show where Sarah Beeny offers expert advice to a couple of property developers which they promptly ignore. The show I was watching included a lady who was renovating a flat in a huge old manor house where the layout was complicated by the fact that in order to get from the kitchen to the dining room you had to go through a third room, effectively turning that room into a very big corridor. Sarah Beeny suggested that she put in a secret door, one disguised to look like a part of the wall or a bookshelf, so that there was access from kitchen to dining room without compromising the character of either.
I thought it sounded like a really good advice and she took the wannabe property developer to a similar place that had a secret door and it worked fabulously well. You could barely tell it was there, decorated as it was just like the rest of the wall. The idea was, predictably, dismissed out of hand.
I really rather like the idea of hidden doors. This one is rather fabulous:
Thank you Kelly Sue.
And there are companies out there that specialise in hidden doors. The aptly named Hidden Door Company has some nice ones, as does Space Dan Diego. If you want really cheesy automated hidden doorways, controlled by a James Bond-esque candlestick or maybe a fingerprint scanner, then Hidden Passageways has some very amusing ideas. These are all US companies, but I am sure there’s some in the UK too.
I definitely think that a hidden doorway has to go on my List of Things I Want In My House!
