The Hidden Door I Finally Put in My Closet

I have loved hidden doors for years. I am not entirely sure why, other than the fact that if there is an opportunity to make a perfectly normal part of a house slightly more mysterious and unnecessarily complicated, I am probably going to take it.

I had actually posted about wanting one years ago, and eventually I reached the point where I stopped talking about it and said, essentially, let’s just do it. Aaron did not require much convincing, which is one of the many reasons our house continues to get stranger.

The plan was to create a hidden entrance into my closet using what looks like a large full-length mirror. When it is closed, it just reads as a substantial mirror in the room. Then the entire thing swings open and, surprise, closet.

Completely necessary? No.

Did I need it anyway? Obviously.

The placement actually solved a design problem too. I had been working through how to reconfigure that side of the bedroom and closet, and the mirror location was one of the few places where the hidden-door idea made visual sense. Eventually, the plan also grew to include a glass-and-iron partition wall nearby to help define the enormous bedroom and separate the spaces a little better.

So, for once, the ridiculous idea was also somewhat practical.

Then the door arrived.

If you drove past our house during this period and wondered why there was an enormous pallet sitting in the garage for what seemed like forever, this was why.

The company I ordered it from neglected to mention one fairly important detail before delivery:

The door weighs approximately 350 pounds.

They also apparently offered white-glove delivery, which would have been extremely useful information before a small rhinoceros disguised as a mirror arrived at my house and needed to go up a flight of stairs.

I started calling moving companies.

The quotes were around $800 just to move it upstairs.

Not install it. Not modify the house. Just take the giant mirror-door from downstairs to upstairs.

At that point, I am fairly certain $800 was less a moving quote and more a polite way of saying, “We really do not want this job.”

Eventually, my contractor and three other guys decided they could handle it themselves. Using shoulder straps, brute force, and what I assume was a complete disregard for their own spinal health, they somehow maneuvered this 350-pound thing up the stairs.

I watched.

Helpfully.

There are moments during home renovation when you begin questioning whether the thing you wanted was worth the trouble required to get it.

This was one of those moments.

Fortunately, once it was upstairs and installed, I immediately forgot the entire ordeal.

Because it is very cool.

Closed, it looks like a large mirror. There is no obvious “secret room” treatment or fake bookshelf announcing that something unusual is happening. It just looks like it belongs there.

Then you open it and walk straight into the closet.

That subtlety is what I wanted. I love hidden doors, but I did not want something that looked like we were trying very hard to have a hidden door. I wanted it integrated into the room so that unless someone showed you, you might not immediately realize what it was.

Of course, like most projects in this house, installing the door did not actually finish anything. The next phase is the glass-and-iron partition wall beside it, which will help break up the bedroom and hopefully improve the heating and cooling situation. The room is large enough that its temperature has a tendency to affect the kids’ bedrooms, so creating more separation should actually help the house function better.

See?

Practical.

The fact that I get to enter my closet through a secret 350-pound mirror is merely a bonus.

This project took years of me thinking about it, months of a giant pallet occupying the garage, several extremely strong men, and one very expensive lesson in asking about delivery services before ordering architectural objects that weigh more than I do.

Still worth it.

I finally have my hidden door.