Do you want to know a secret [door]?

I’ve got relatively reasonable ambitions when it comes to money. I’d like to earn enough, with an eventual partner, to support ourselves and our family in comfort, while still saving a large portion of our income for the future.

But if I should happen to find myself fabulously wealthy for one reason or another, there’s one useless luxury I’d love to be able to dump money into: a secret-riddled home.

Maybe I read too many mystery novels as a kid, or (more likely) all the hours I spent playing the “Myst” series of computer have left me enthralled by the concept of secret passages, hidden doors and the like. But a bookshelf that swung open to reveal my private office when a particular volume was depressed would be the height of awesome, as a Wired.com feature today reminds me.

Above: Photo by Jessamyn West, via Flickr, under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license. Original

Would there be any practical use to expending large amounts of money on hidden doors, secret passages and staircases and the like? I suppose it could come in handy as a more stylish “panic room” in the event of a home invasion – but that’s not something I spend a lot of time worrying about. Mostly, it’d just be really, really cool. And I’m relatively modest in my grandiose dreams – one hidden room would be enough. If I could think bigger, maybe a network of passages. I certainly don’t need some of the demands secret-door-provider Steve Humble of Creative Home Engineering can provide, like “an underground complex with 10 secret-passage doors made from Kevlar-steel ballistic armor, blast-resistant hinges, and multiple redundant locking systems.”

Still, it’s nice to know there are people out there dedicated to making these ludicrous dreams a reality.

Now, to go about making those millions…