How to Make a Secret Room (Through a Wardrobe) | I Like To Make Stuff

hey I'm Bob and I like to make stuff today we're gonna make a wardrobe that leads to a secret room today we're in Josh's basement they've got a long room that they want to turn it into two separate rooms they want to have a guest bedroom up here and then keep the office on this back section so we're gonna build a wall right down the middle but instead of a normal door it's gonna be a secret door josh is gonna give us the plan so like Bob said we're gonna start this project by making a wall between the office and the front part of the room it's a pretty standard wall it's gonna go under the ducting and it's gonna have its own separate door rather having a boring door I want to cover it with a corner wardrobe that wardrobe will look and function just like a normal wardrobe but when you open it you can push through the back wall into the office now that we have the plan we've got our materials list now we got to build a wall we're gonna be building this new wall running right into an existing wall and we don't want to mess with the existing wall too much but we do have to cut out the trim along the bottom and so to cut that out we need to figure out the width of the new wall plus the drywall on each side of it and then chop out the baseboard at that same size and to do that we're going to use this new oscillating tool from Dremel you have these different types of bits you drop them on and then you can cut out different things I'll give you all the details on this later on [Music] so that cutout in trim is generally the right size we may have to trim it a little bit more as we get the wall into place the next step is to frame out the wall and we're going to be putting that directly on top of the carpet now you may want to cut out the carpet to put it directly on the concrete as well if you do that you're gonna have to put down tack strips to hold the carpet on both sides of the new wall so instead we're gonna be putting the wall directly on top of the carpet the one potential downside to that is that if you ever had a flood in this room that carpet that's covered up underneath the wall would be really hard to dry out as the homeowner I'm accepting that risk I want the wall to go directly on top of the carpet because I can remove it if I need to if the room ever floods or we need to move I can take this wall out and it'll look exactly the same as it does now [Music] I've got the small section of the wall that's going to go right here all framed up and I went ahead and put a pressure-treated board on the bottom which is what you're supposed to do even though it's not really going to matter here because we're putting it on carpet so now we're just going to stand this thing up and slide it into place [Music] we've got the two sections of the wall up and locked together they're also tied into the joist above and the stud in the wall so now we've got a time into the concrete and we're going to use some concrete anchors for that we've got a specialized drill bit to drill into the concrete and then this big fat screw to hold it down but to get through the studs first we're going to use a regular drill bit when you're doing this you got to make sure that you get the right length of screw for what you're working with I'm working with a normal stud which is one and a half inches and you have to have at least another inch down into the concrete so this is a 2 and 3/4 so it's just more than we need [Music] [Music] [Music] we've got all the framing in place but before we put on the drywall we actually need to put in a little bit of electrical stuff we've got two boxes one for a switch and one for an outlet that are going to go on the inside of this room but we have this particular type that's adjustable and that's because we're going to put one sheet of drywall out here and two on the inside that's going to help cut down some of the noise transfer between the rooms and the cool thing about these is that you can put them on the studs and then adjust them after you get the drywall in place to move them in and out to match the surface of the drywall [Music] power for this room is going to come from a junction box in the utility room back there but in order for this switch to run those lights we had to run a double strand through this soffit so they can go into here and back to there [Music] we've got these lights to put in the ceiling and they're gonna go in this soffit now this is empty for the most part behind this but I want to make sure that we don't stick a regular drywall knife up in there and hit any wiring or any of the air-conditioning duct that's a little bit higher up so instead we're going to use the dremel tool which is sponsoring this video they've got a really cool dry wall jab saw and it only goes in a little bit but it's enough for us to be able to easily cut out that circle now that we've got these holes drilled we're gonna reach up there and pull a wire through to hook up these lights we're not going to cover all that in this video because it's not really relevant if you want to do something like this and you're not comfortable just hire an electrician [Music] I built this box to hold the electrical components for the door lock assembly and we'll talk about all that later but the box has a door that can open from the inside I needed to have power run to it so we added an outlet and it's all ready for the Arduino and anything else that we want to put in here later on now to get into the room you're gonna come through the wardrobe and into this doorway we have a hollow core door that we bought that doesn't have any decoration on it doesn't have a hole for the handle so it's a complete flat face so now we're gonna add the mortises for the hinges so that it can hinge off of this door plate so I measured an existing door and it's about six and a half inches from either side with one in the middle I'm going to use a straight bit on my router to carve out the pocket that these hinges are going to sit in [Music] traditionally you'd want the mortise to match the radius of the door hinge but I'm just going to carve all the way through and that way we can move these hinges front to back so we can get this edge of the door to line up with the drywall we need the more to say in a pocket that is the same thickness as this door hinge now I have a plunge router so a plunge router squeeze it up and down and the bit extends now to match this exactly we're going to try a little trick trick is I'm going to push this down so that the bit is flush and I'm gonna lock it in this down position then I'm gonna take this stop bar I'm gonna loosen it so I can slide it up put in hinge lock it down unlock the base so now when it protrudes is the exact thickness of that hinge [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so the corner cabinet is going to be two doors little side pieces and then a frame that goes against the wall these one by force are going to make up that interior frame [Music] the last piece to cut out for the Wardrobe is the top I've marked all the lines on this piece of plywood and I've set it on top of this piece of insulation foam so that when I cut it with a circular saw I don't hit the floor [Music] we've got all the structural elements to the wardrobe done but now I'm going to add some rustic elements to the front of the doors now I'm going to do that by cutting up some strips of quarter-inch luan and just pin nailing them for the front [Music] [Music] we've got the door hung now we're ready to start putting in the frame that's going to be the Wardrobe it's coming off two perpendicular walls so we've got these one by sixes that are going to be the meat of it and then it folds around at a 45 degree so we've got these two pieces that need to be glued together at this angle and so we're gonna do that by adding a whole bunch of glue down in this seam and then driving in some Brad nails to hold it at that angle while that glue dries [Music] [Music] so this piece is all glued up and ready for paint this is going to come out of the wall about right here then there'll be a matching one that comes out right here there'll be two doors so it'll look like a wardrobe and then on the inside once those doors are open we're gonna have a frame right there and then a frame around the door so you can't quite tell where the door is so we're gonna start attaching these pieces together and stick them on the wall [Music] [Music] [Music] we've got this frame in place but unfortunately there's no stud right here it's over here so instead we're gonna drill some pilot holes through here then take this off put in some anchors in the drywall so that we have something solid to screw this frame to both of these frames are in place and we've got the door pushed up against the frame now the bottom section of this trim is actually going to be attached to the door so when you open the door it will go with it that way there's nothing to step over as you go through the room so for this piece I'm gonna sit down a carpenter's square to have a little bit of a spacer off the carpet then we're gonna put this piece of trim on top of that we've left a little bit of gap on the side so it can open and close freely I'll put some glue on the back of this and Brad nail it to the door so that'll be a nice strong glue joint when it's all done unfortunately there's a lot of bounce in this hollow core door since it's not really locked into anything yet so those nails aren't sinking all the way but they are holding the two pieces together so for now we're gonna open the door put on some clamps to really lock them together and let the new drive [Music] we've got the door ready to hang and to space it from the top evenly on both sides we're going to use actually one of the blades from the multi-max we're gonna hold it up into place push the door up and then Mark across the door and the frame in three places so that we can add hinges we've got these special non mortising hinges that go on the surface of both the door and the frame and they close together so they're actually flatter than a normal hinge we're gonna use those but first we have to mark the spots for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] we're getting the drywall put up on the outside of this wall and Josh she's putting on the first coat of mud let's go talk about the other side of this wall and what's gonna go in so on this side of the wall we're gonna actually put two sheets of drywall five-eighths inch and that should help soundproof this room a little bit and that's because Josh records podcast in here is a 3d printer that makes some noise and his kids will be on the other side of this wall but before we put that drywall up we've got to put some low voltage electronics to control the lock so first off let me say that this is not supposed to be a safe room it's really just a place that's safe from his children so we're not really worried about security but we do have a small electromagnet to act as a lock this magnet is gonna be mounted inside the doorframe and then this plate is going to be mounted to the door and when powered these will lock together and keep the door shut so this is gonna be powered by 12 volts and that's gonna run through a low voltage wire all the way down to this box where it's gonna attach to this relay this relay then gets attached to the Arduino through a 5 volt plug and then all of the instructions on here will control when that is turned on and off opening and closing the door those instructions will be triggered by two switches one on this side of the wall and one on that side of the wall and the good thing is that the power is kind of a fail-safe if we lose power this will open so you can't get stuck in the room [Music] you can inset this magnet into the 2x4 if you wanted to and then push this piece over but it said we're going to face mount it that way we only have to notch out just a very little bit of the door so that it can pass by the magnet [Music] [Applause] so we're running all these wires separately from these boxes because you're not supposed to put low voltage and high voltage stuff in the same box so we're running these separate holes to run the 5 and 12 volt lines through them so the secondary box is going to have the button to disengage the lock and this will be a 5 volt line that's why we're separating it from the normal light switch [Music] we did a whole bits video on soldering if you want to find out more information typically you would want to wrap these in a heat shrink tubing we don't have any handy so we're gonna use electrical tape instead since this is a little voltage that'll be just we're ready to put the drywall up on this wall and then we've got to cut out some holes so I can fit around all these different boxes this is a double layer wall so we're gonna have to cut all those holes twice so we're gonna measure cut the holes in one piece of drywall and then use it as a template trace those holes on the other piece so that we can come [Music] [Music] so we've got the electronics just about ready to test out let me run you through what we have here this is an ESP module it's Arduino compatible but it's got Wi-Fi on it so we can eventually hook this whole thing up to the smart home system if we want to this is running the code which is extremely simple these are the two button lines that come in one from this room one from the other room this is the relay and that's going to the lock system into this 12-volt power supply so this thing is 12 volts this piece is run on three volts or 5 volts and that's going to be connected through USB into this outlet right here that has a USB port on it actually not this one the one down inside the box but the whole thing will fit on the inside of the box be powered by these two things and should work out just fine on the inside of the wall we're gonna have that simple button to release and engage the lock but out here there's gonna be a secret there's gonna be a floating shelf right here and on top of that shelf is a little planter now Josh came up with this cool design on the bottom of the planter there's some different shapes that as they spin will engage a micro switch but put it together here and turn it you'll be able to hear it click and every one of those clicks will trigger an on or an off so this will be sitting here when you want to open the door turn it'll turn it'll unlock the door and then you can go in currently this system is plugged in it is not engaged though so you can see that this is not attached and I'm gonna hit this button and the electromagnet is acting and cannot be pulled off ok so now I'm gonna disengage it it works while we're finishing that up let me tell you about the multi-max 50 from dremel this is an upgraded oscillating tool with a bunch of really cool features we've been using it a ton on this project and it's worked out great you can cut scrape grind sand all that because it has 30 accessories with it and it's super easy to swap out the tip on the end of the tool it's also got some other stuff like a lot more power it's built at an angle so you can easily cut at floor level like if you were cutting on a door jamb and this tool is only 1:29 including those 30 attachments hit the link down in the description to find out more and with Father's Day coming up this might be something you want to think about as a gift [Music] Josh and his wife finished up all the painting and all the decorating so this thing is completely done the only change that we made was a little bit of timing on the button so now when you press the button it unlocks it immediately but to lock it you need some time to get out of the room so we put a little delay so that you press it and you've got three and a half seconds to get the door shut before it locks up so now this thing is all done let's go check it out [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so there it is this is basically three sections of a single project we built a wall which is just a regular wall with a door in it so if that's all you needed to make a separate storage room or small office there you go and we also added a piece of furniture on this to kind of hide that entryway you can do that by building your own or you can get a piece of furniture and cut the back out the third component is the lock it's really really simple electronics but it makes a pretty big difference it makes a really cool space I'd also love to know if you learn something from this video so please let us know down in the comments we've got tons of other types of projects that you may be interested in check some of those out and if you're not subscribed go ahead and do that as well that's it for this one thanks for watching see you next time this thing runs at 5 ants but ants it's got ants in 5 ants yeah but that's Jake Jake Jacek Lee Jay generally basically basically it makes a really cool space god

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Views: 7,523,184

Rating: 4.9198332 out of 5

Keywords: secret room, hidden room, secret, hidden rooms, secret door, secret rooms, secret door in house, secret room in house, hidden rooms in houses, hidden door, hidden door bookcase, hidden door bookcase diy, diy, wardrobe, bookcase, secrets, hidden, hidden wardrobe, hidden wardrobe ideas, safe room, secret wardrobe design, design ideaas, how to, how-to, do it yourself, safe room in house, safe room in homes, office ideas, secret o, i like to make stuff, electronics, 3D printing

Id: 848Zlv0PRHk

Length: 26min 21sec (1581 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2019