Guitar Wall - Secret Door!

My den is where I do drafting, video editing, programming, songwriting, and where I just hang out. To the casual observer, it's a just another finished basement with tacky wood paneling.

However, if you approach the music instruments hanging on the wall and pull on the neck of the guitar on the right you will have found the entrance to my bedroom!

Yeah, that wood paneling is pretty ugly and dated. But if you engineer it correctly, you can use it to your advantage by hiding the seams of the door in the grooves between the planks! This partition wall is free-standing, and is held upright by friction and the furniture on either side of it. The wall itself was sections of 1" welded steel framing which were assembled with through-bolts so it could be disassembled when I eventually moved. Wiring and lighting systems were also incorporated. Each section was faced with paneling which matched the walls of the existing room. The bedroom-side of the wall had switches which controlled the overhead light and some accent lighting which was built into the wall itself. What's more, the bedroom was part of a separate foundation in the house, beneath the porch. The partition wall was erected approximately in the spot of the original foundation, so by walking through the lower level of the house and looking at the perimeter walls, it was not obvious that a full basement foundation existed beneath the porch in the first place.

Apart from my love of such projects, my reason for building this wall was pretty simple: I don't like having a computer in my bedroom. I prefer to keep the two separate. Although it was just over 1" thick, the wall also provided a fair amount of sound-dampening between the den and the bedroom.