Sara Nainzadeh bought her apartment in 2009, and she also built a secret room behind a bookcase. The room is hidden to the naked eye and it cost her $25,000 to build.
Creative Home Engineering offers different kinds of hidden doors. They hide rooms behind staircases and fireplaces. Nainzadeh wanted a bookshelf.
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They built it in their own workshop in Arizona. It's custom made to fit her apartment, and was installed by their own team.
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Her version cost $25,000. This is what it looks like in action.
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"I want to say about 99% of the people I told that I was doing this thought I was insane," Nainzadeh said. "I was like, ‘I don’t care. I’m doing to do it.'"
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She uses it for work. The inside is a pretty normal office space.
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And it's for hanging out. There's a couch, and one wall is covered in the wallpaper she grew up with.
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She keeps a portrait of her dog, Fellini.
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If she wants to get out from inside, she has to press this button on the door.
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But there's also another exit.
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It leads to a small bathroom with a washer and dryer.
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From there, she can go back to her living room.
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When the living room door is closed, it looks like just another wooden panel in the wall. Nainzadeh can't get back in that way — she has to go back to the bookshelf in her bedroom.
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To open the bookcase door, you have to tilt "A Light in the Attic" by Shel Silverstein.
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"I thought it was ironic," Nainzadeh said. "A light in the attic. It’s like a secret room. You can’t really see that there’s a secret light behind it, or a room there."
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Creative Home Engineering hid a sensor inside.
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The sensor tells a magnet behind the bookshelf to unlatch, swinging it open.
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"Sometimes I ask people to pick or guess," Nainzadeh said. “They don’t realize it’s Shel Silverstein. They think it’s a Stephen King book."
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Living with a secret door poses unique problems. Only Creative Home Engineering can do repairs. But they're very responsive.
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“When my housekeeper comes, sometimes I’ll leave one of the doors open so she knows how to get in there," Nainzadeh said.
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Because it's made of wood, the door expands and contracts depending on the temperature. It can get stuck.
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To fix that, she can take some books off. There's also a clever bolt hidden underneath the bookcase. Wrenching it pulls the door closer or farther from its hinge, which can make it unstuck.
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Nainzadeh loves showing the room off to her friends. “There’s a joke now that it’s not a secret room," she said. "Everyone knows about it. Cat’s out of the bag.”
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Because of her apartment's shape, Nainzadeh's visitors don't always realize there's a secret room just beyond the closet.
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“If I’m planning on getting a new place, I definitely would want to get another one," Nainzadeh said. "I love my secret room."