A Painted Plywood Wardrobe with a Secret Bookcase Door

Reason number 108 that The Modern Carpenter won’t be bothering the FSTE 100 any time soon - I spent a week - a whole week - making this secret door work. And, being entirely honest with you, dear reader, I regret nothing. 

A gorgeously fitted plywood wardrobe. Look at that bookshelf, surely… there’s nothing behind it?

Let’s go back to the brief for this job - a wardrobe for a lucky young chap, to suit him as he grows up - we’re talking practicality, colour, enough space for all his growing interests, timeless styling to go through adolescence - oh, and he’s a big reader too, passionate about comics. After the site visit, inspiration struck - something I’d been wanting to try for ages… the secret bookcase door. 

This made for a fun design process - I had to decide which pivot hinges to use before finalising the swing of the door, which meant prototyping in the workshop to check everything was going to work. 

Design signed off, the real meat of the build was taking what I’d learnt from the prototype and turning into a working, swinging, locking door. Loads of things to account for - from a structural point of view the weight of the loaded door was going to be huge, so there’s a bit of reinforcement going on behind the scenes, as well as various hidden castors to ensure everything hangs and swings as it should. 

The latching mechanism was another fun problem that needed solving. I’d thought of using a cable from the start, but finding a suitable latch took a while, as did the means to route the cable (as a keen cyclist I eventually settled on using a bottom bracket cable guide), but the most enjoyable part was the secret book - so sandwiched between a couple of classic tomes is a disguised plywood pull handle, with decoupage Tintin panels - perfect for our young comic book fan. 

And where does that secret door lead to, you ask? Er. Nowhere. Well I say nowhere - but which 11 year old on the planet wouldn’t want the best hide & seek spot ever invented? 

The rest of the wardrobe follows our usual high standards - lots of useful hanging, cupboard and shelf space, with lovely, big, smooth-running soft-close drawers. It’s finished with a hard wearing paint, colour matched to Farrow & Ball’s Bamboozle.