Hidden doors
New York Times posted an article about hidden doors in homes Secret Doors Are Having a Major Moment - The New York Times (nytimes.com).
A few years ago, one of our clients requested we hide his AV Equipment. Actually, he asked that I create a cabinet for his AV equipment. Then he said I could do whatever I thought was needed for aesthetics.
The overall project was a renovation to a 1920s hillside Spanish style house, with much of the original character intact. The new work we did was intended to blend with that character.
The AV cabinet included a large TV, a rack of equipment, and several speakers. Aside from my goal of making it look good when not being used, he had his two goals. The space was to be used by just one or two people. Goal one was TV watching/listening. Goal two was music listening. These require different speakers. The TV arrangement was relatively simple. The music only speaker setup was not so.
For the music listening, he picked a pair of high-end prototype speakers. These needed to be arranged with air around them, ie not enclosed, and set on spiked feet, pointed at the listener. This meant not in a cabinet.
The solution was a motorized shelf that would extend the speaker out from the inside of the cabinet. We did this with extremely heavy-duty hardware to properly “anchor” the speaker acoustically.
For my goal, I designed the cabinet to look like an old, paneled wall, with raised panel walnut woodwork. The panels were mounted on a hidden track system so that one could open the center for the TV and speakers and sliding the panels to a hidden storage section. The pull-out equipment rack was behind one of the panels.
Here’s the result. The furniture was rearranged for this photo shoot.
More project pictures are here.