My good friends, Josh and Amy, recently renovated their attic and were able to close off some of the “unusable” space into a secret room. Josh has wanted to have a secret room his entire life, and with their first child on his way soon, the recent renovation was the perfect way to make it happen. The whole idea is for his son, in about four years, to find a secret playroom in his house!
The renovation left an opening for me to build the bookcase in, framed out simply as a short door frame. Even though the walls are new construction, the floor and ceiling have been around since the 1920’s. Old construction adds a whole lot of variables to making built in cabinetry, and I definitely ran into lots of hurdles because of it.
There are still several things to go back and fix up, even though it’s “complete”. I need to add quarter round at the bottom, touch up some paint and paint the backside of the cabinet to mask some of the modifications that I had to make mid-project.
Ultimately, I spent a lot of time, trimming, sanding, shimming and adjusting to make the cabinet fit, roll, open and close like I wanted it to, but it was TOTALLY worth it. My friend is extremely happy with it, and it ended up working better than I ever thought it would!
This project was partially supported by Nicholas Gomez on Patreon! Thanks to Nicholas for all of his awesome support!
Here’s what you’ll need:
(purchasing via these affiliate links supports ILTMS)