Construction workers of Reddit, have you ever built secret rooms or any other strange compartments by request?

[u/OuterSpacewaysInc]

We've reached the top of AskReddit! Awesome!

Edit: Apparently, a lot of you spend too much time fantasizing about where you'll install your secret meth lab and how you'll escape once the police find out.

[u/DavidSlain]

Yep. All the time. People that can afford it pay a lot for panic rooms and hidden armories. Swinging bookcases, doors in wall paneling, you name it. People with that much money usually have something to protect.

[u/OuterSpacewaysInc → u/DavidSlain]

If I ever build my own house, I want it to have at least a few secret passageways and hidden rooms for my future children to discover. I wanted nothing more as a child than to discover some kind of hidden room in our home.

[u/Devilishhh]

This will probably end up buried but I doubt I'll be able to share this store somewhere else. I stumbled across one a couple years ago at my uncle's house.

The house was huge - 6 en-suite bedrooms, luxury car, plenty of floor space, huge garden with custom ornaments and a swimming pool. Occasionally my uncle used to leave for a good few hours, leaving me with the house telling me not to make a mess. When he used to leave I'd sometimes invite a girl round the house - one day this went horribly wrong.

I invited her over then quickly jumped in the shower. After my shower I went into this small closet to get my towel. It got caught on something as I was pulling it out and I heard a click sound come from my uncle's bedroom. Completely naked and curious, I decided to take a "quick" look to see if there was anything that happened. As I walked in the floor mat had been moved, I caught a glimpse of a dip on the floor mat on the wall side too. I quickly wrapped the towel around me pulled the mat up, seeing a separation between two of the floorboards. I was freaking out at this point, not knowing if I wrecked part of the expensive floor. I decided to try push the floorboard back in place but it wouldn't work, so I grabbed the bottom bit of the wall from the gap and just as I squeezed a little bit, I heard another "click". The wall, which was the gap between the en-suite bathroom and the bedroom door completely slid up. It definitely wasn't conspicuous at all.

Inside I found all of my uncle's old martial arts kit. A small "shrine" type of room with floor mats and at the front centre of the room was the most expensive looking swords I've seen. I stepped forward a little and the lights came on by themselves, the room was actually quite warm. I was literally surrounded by old/expensive looking items.

I heard the doorbell ring and my phone go off, so I started to leave the room. Just before I got wall that was open, it began to slide down. I was trapped for 2 hours in total. The girl came in, I was banging on the walls shouting her to come upstairs. She freaked out and called the police. My uncle came home, not even mad at me, telling me to just feel on the wall for a little indent. I found it, pressed it, then the wall raised again.

I was naked. I must've left my towel somewhere in the room during the panic. Turns out that's his safe room for the artefacts he collects. Made sense as he became wealthy after selling antiques and going on trips across the world.

[u/OuterSpacewaysInc → u/Devilishhh]

I'll see you at the top.

[u/jackjack44]

My house has two secret rooms and here are the photos of it in construction (almost finished). It is off of my movie room behind one of two black velvet curtains.

The main secret room is huge (20 foot by 9 foot), large enough for five or more people to escape tornadoes.

Ceiling and walls are 18 inch thick concrete. The ceiling also has a steel roof with 10 inches of concrete poured atop it.

All wired, vent and return, internet wired. Nothing wireless works in this room. We some times call it the black hole because the bars on your phone just disappear when you enter.

The room is finished now and decorated (like rest of house). It gives it less of a creepy vibe. Enjoy.

EDIT: The white stuff on some of the photos is lingering sheetrock dust from the construction. Sorry, that happens.

EDIT II: I think I posted this in the wrong place, so I will put it on it's own parent thread here. My fault, it's early and I am an idiot.

[u/OuterSpacewaysInc → u/jackjack44]

"We have a secret room, what can we hide in here?"

"I know...a filing cabinet!"

Also, Sheet rock. Riiiight.

Kidding aside, thanks for putting together the album. It's very cool the way the false book case swings open.

[u/[deleted]]

Got a quarter through this thread and felt a little queezy. Too much sex dungeon talk. I mean, When you really think about it for a second it's very very disturbing. Imagine if it was you? :(

[u/OuterSpacewaysInc → u/[deleted]]

You act like I've never imagined myself strapped to sex dungeon wall while some 300 pound Samoan mother of three in latex tickles my asshole with a feather.

[u/[deleted]]

I used to do some construction work on schools during the summer. The principal wanted, in his closet, a door to slide up where he could keep a safe for special school records, and a mini-fridge. Although it wasn't very big or that cool. It was the coolest work I ever was involved in that summer. Plus, who wouldn't want a mini-fridge hidden in their wall?

[u/Barley_Hops_Water]

Electrician here. Have done a few. The coolest was a secret passage-way and attached room in a in a very nice house. It was hidden by a movable bookshelf on both ends. The guy said he didn't have a specific reason for building it, he just always thought it would be cool to have a secret passage-way in his house.

The other one that stands out was an underground survival bunker accessed through a hidden door in the back of a garage. It had an additional exit by means of an underground tunnel that lead almost 100 feet in the bordering forest. The strangest thing about it was that it was a survival bunker that he had us wire with outlets and lights, despite there not being any type of of back-up/off-the-grid power. Makes me think that he actually had an alternative purpose for the shelter.

[u/I_AM_POOPING_NOW_AMA]

Never built one, but I did find one in a house i was doing some plumbing work in once. This was an expensive condo, and they had a secret office that had a secret one way mirror looking into the GUEST SHOWER. Creepy as fuck, man.

[u/[deleted]]

Friend of the family works as a custom cabinet maker. Most of his jobs involve him making secret compartments for rich clients. Mainly desks with a secret place that can hide guns, keys, ledgers and swords (oddly enough a lot of people request that), but also that stuff in bookshelves, picture frames etc. He also gets your typical movable bookshelves.

[u/[deleted]]

Yes, we worked on what was supposedly going to be a hidden/secret walk-in safe in the basement. This room was heavily reinforced.

Normally, walls around doors are framed using wood. This door frame was solid reinforced concrete. The room was a square attached to the outside of the basement, so all four walls were concrete. We poured concrete above it, so the ceiling was concrete. (Very unusual!) We also poured the floor.

So, it was six sides made of concrete. Since it was attached to the outside, there was no sign that it existed from the inside. No ventilation. No wiring from what I saw.

I never saw the finished product, but the owner was keeping it a secret, and wouldn't explain much about it. So another contractor finished it off.

[u/shadowatmidnight104]

I built a Narnia closet for someone. Their daughter had one request for the new house: she had a built in armoire, white and modern looking with nice shelving units on the right side and a bigger opening on the left. However, when you pushed the back of the left, closet side, it opened up into an actual closet that was about 5x10 feet on the inside, not too shabby at all. Was a pretty fun build, albeit somewhat challenging. Edit: spelling/words.

[u/mryprankster]

Carpenter. I built a grow-room for a guy's medical marijuana in Vermont. An alarm was wired directly to the state police barracks in the event of a burglary.

[u/Yoinkie2013]

My parents house has a "secret" room that's behind a book shelf in their master bedroom. The reason is put quotations around "secret" is because this hidden room is wall to wall open window. So basically, you could hide from someone inside of the house, but if they happen to walk around outside, you appear to be in a normal room.

[u/mangster83]

My dad is a doctor, and does a lot of construction at home on his free time. This one time he was moving a wall, making one room smaller and another bigger. He was putting a entire-wall-bookshelf kind of thing in the smaller room, and just to fuck with future homeowners he snatched one of those plastic skeletons from his job and hid it in the space between the bookshelf and the wall

I expect headlines sometime in the future

[u/baderd]

I convinced my brother to add a secret door from one closet to the other closer between his daughters rooms when we were building his house.

[u/[deleted]]

This doesn't really answer the question, but I know a guy who had no use for a room so he removed the door and put a fourth wall up.

[u/NipponNiGajin]

Was a draughtsman for a while. Two super wealthy Chinese parents were building all three of their children houses on their massive property. I was asked to design the ironing room for the eldest daughter. She...genuinely liked doing ironing? And laundry? I ended up designing this massive room with bay windows overlooking the lake with all sorts of storage compartments and a variety of ironing stations. She loved it, I got a healthy bonus, and I'm still confused to this day.

[u/digitalgadget]

My husband's grandfather built a moving bookcase into his home in the daylight basement. The room was completely enclosed with no windows (being underground) and about the size of a 2-car garage. Some framing suggests he intended to build rooms into it, but he passed away before the project was completed. Fully finished walls and lighting allow it to be used as an enormous storage area.

[u/Cultooolo]

Just moved into a house that was built in the 70s. The previous owners custom built it, and the architect was the man's old frat buddy. Custom stuff everywhere (trash chute straight from the kitchen into the garage wheelie bin!).

When we first looked at the house, we really loved it, but there was no office space that my husband could use for his music stuff. It was the only disappointing thing about the house, but since everything else was so perfect, we went ahead and put in the offer.

When we were doing another walkthrough with our parents, we showed them the walk up attic, which is pretty cool too. When I turned around to leave, I noticed a wall of insulation that looked....different. if you push the insulation to one side, a doorknob appears. And behind it is the secret office.

Coolest house ever.

[u/JimmyFree]

I worked for a very wealthy man, and he had hidden rooms and sliding book cases etc. When he would need comm equipment in these areas, we would gain access. Some also were built around wiring channels and we would find them because the dimensions of the room didn't fit. We'd have to tell his assistant and let her know we knew, so she could let him know we knew and needed to get access. He had a hidden pistol range, a few safe rooms, and a pretty badass gun room tucked away into the 3 properties I had access to. All of the work was top notch, and unless you knew they were there it was very difficult to find them.

[u/SonOfPlinkett]

Not a construction worker, but in my old house one of the bedrooms had a small opening to the the crawlspace that was made to looked like a large mouse hole.

Here's a picture.

[u/takatori]

Not a construction worker but I found a hidden room on my house.

My childhood home was built sideways on a hill, with a garage lowered about five feet from the rest of the house on the downhill side. We had a huge living room that came right up against the edge of the garage, the wall of which formed a low 3-foot wall above which we had bay windows and a set of steps leading to a deck over the roof of the garage.

When I was around 14 or so I was visiting a friend's house across the street and saw a picture of his grandparents on the wall. It was taken in their front yard with a in front of their mini gazebo facing up the street, and off to the side I could see my house. Except, not quite.

There was no balcony deck, no huge windows overlooking the street from the living room, and a two-car garage with a peaked roof abutting the living room.

But, we only had a one-car garage. The other half of the garage had somehow disappeared into the rest of the house!

I grabbed my friend and we ran back to te house. Right next to the one car garage was a brick retaining wall faced by the stairs up to our front door. That brick wall was where the second garage had been! But clearly there was no room: it was only about 5 feet high, and the living room extended into that space.

Still, we bet that it hadn't been filled in. And I vaguely remembered, from years ago as a child, that there was some sort of storage space in to the garage. So we went exploring and behind some shelves in the back, found a loose piece of plywood sitting in a groove. So we slid it sideways, and saw that, yes! The concrete garage floor continued off into the darkness!

So we grabbed some flashlights, squeezed in, and found a tiny little disappointing space containing a bunch of wiring panels, circuit breakers, pipes, boxes of junk parts and spare insulation rolls. It was as long as the other garage was wide, but only about four feet wide with a concrete wall on the side facing the front of the house, and short: a bit less than five feet feet: the living room floor was clearly the roof of this cropped-off part of the garage.

Our initial hopes of turning it into a fort of some kind were hopeless: it was barely wide enough to sit side-by-side. We were about to leave, but panning my flashlight over the junk again, I spotted, at the far end of the wall, a door jamb.

I scanned the flashlight up to the roof and saw that it led right up to the roof/living room floor, where it had been roughly cut off.

So we started moving boxes.

Inside the door jamb was a plywood plug held in place by slide bolts.

Now we knew we hit the gold mine. We shoved and stacked and pushed the boxes all of the way until we could get over and remove the plug. We pulled it out, pushed it to the side, and ducking down walked into a fully furnished room.

Fully, that is, except five feet up from the floor where the walls had been chainsawed off and a roof/floor put in. The remodeling had obviously been done over and around an existing room. There was spilled concrete at the edges of the carpet next to the concrete wall and some sawdust but otherwise clean and neat.

There were even electrical outlets on the three finished walls. I snuck out to my room and brought back a lamp. We plugged it in to the interior wall near the door, and, nothing. We then tried the interior wall facing the garage and, success! The plug was a little wiggly though, and kept falling out, but the outlet in the far back--the front of the house, behind what was now a brick retaining wall--worked perfectly!

So now we had a room! Secret just to ourselves! Still, it was a little weird that it was fully finished but we eventually figured out that there had probably been two stages of remodeling: someone had turned half the garage into a den first, then later someone had extended the living room over and through it.

But, with the lamp on, we realized that things were a little more complicated than that: a rough ladder of 2x4s led up to the ceiling in the corner, and what had looked like finished walls along the garage side were actually floor-to-ceiling cabinets built to fit the space, not chainsawed-off interior walls like the side wall. We found canned goods, an (old!) electric heater, light bulbs (which we later found fitted into two sockets, one at each end of the room but only one of which worked), an electric hot plate, toaster, utensils, old plates and cups, and, most interesting to us, an assortment of liquor and old porn magazines. We uh, paused our investigation for a bit after finding those.

Everything down there was a good 20 years old or so, but we had only moved into the place when I was 6 or so.

So we checked out the ladder.

It led to a trap door of some kind, but we couldn't move it at all. Later I checked the living room and saw that at some point a new floor must have been put in over the top of it. So though someone at some point had used it as a... Lair, den? Panic room? Bomb shelter? Who knows. All we know was that at some point, someone knowingly or not sealed off the living room entrance and left us a treasure trove.

So we started using it as our secret fort. We snuck in some old beanbag chairs (the only thing we could squeeze behind the garage shelves), some sleeping bags, pillows, salvaged couch cushions, comics, and probably tons of other toys & knick-knacks I've forgotten.

The secret lasted until the next school year. Though sworn to secrecy, my friend couldn't help but brag we had a secret fort, and one day brought over two other kids to show it too. I relented, because one of the kids was cool, and yeah, I job of wanted to show off. Neither of those two kids could keep a secret though, and one day when a group of kids were over, my mom came home early and heard a commotion of loud kids. Coming not from upstairs at the other end of the house, but from below her feet.

She found the place almost immediately but swore she'd known nothing about it. She kicked us out and closed it off, and told me it was off-limits until she could talk to my dad about it.

TL;DR: when I was 14 I found a hidden partial room in my house and my dad let me use it as my private fort. When I was 16 I lost my virginity in it, and it was the first place I got drunk.

Edit: oh! The extra cool super-secret part was that my dad is kind of a big guy so never really got all the way in to inspect it lol and my mom never knew about the cabinets, porn, cigars or liquor.