The matter of secret compartments and such is often one of improvisation. When you are building any kind of a cabinet, cupboard, window-seat or chest there's always an easy chance to fix a false back or a false bottom. And a very simple place for silver when you are leaving a house or an apartment is the space within a boxed-in base, the access provided merely by making a small trap door in the bottom shelf or floor of the piece that rests on the base. Such a trap door in the bottom shelf of a bookcase, for instance, with the books in it, is a peculiarly safe hideaway. Or the whole shelf may be hinged to lift up.

An excellent spot may be fixed in the back of a window-seat, if you are facing it with bookshelves-or if you aren't making a window-seat, you could build an over-deep bookcase in units, with wide lower shelves for magazines or large, flat books, and more shallow shelves above, with a secret compartment behind them.

If a runner is laid over the top of this piece, as indicated by the dotted lines, even the crack of the secret lids is entirely concealed. If you make these lids of a single 6" or 8" board, better put small cleats on the underside to prevent warping. Plywood, of course, might not need cleats, as its laminated structure makes warping unlikely anyhow.

Just a few suggestions for planning secret compartments in things you build. But the really secret ones will be the ones you think up yourself.

Certainly here's one unique advantage of building your own furniture-you can make it to any size you want, to fit certain wall-spaces, and you can build in secret compartments that only you would know about.

The few ideas suggested here are intended, mainly, just to give you the idea of how easy it is to make secret places in furniture, either by design or merely by utilizing otherwise waste space. If we were to diagram all the possible places you could devise, then none of them would be entirely secret, as there are a few other copies of this book going around. The really secret hideaways are the ones you devise yourself, and there's no end to the places you can contrive, even without overtaxing your ingenuity.