The world of James Bond makes us think of covert and dangerous operations, where the agent sets out to uncover a previously stolen precious gem or sort-after painting, locked away in a secret and mysterious location. We can picture the devilishly gorgeous spy pressing a little button, whilst taking a puff from his smoking cigar, and “Walla” the hidden safe is revealed. After a few seconds, cigar dangling from his perfectly chiselled lips; he opens the seemingly impregnable safe and then catapults himself down the tall building, the valuable artifact folded neatly under his arm. Job was done!
Yes, those are the thoughts that we conjure up when we think of hidden safes, precious jewels, and secret passageways. But have you thought about securing your own precious belongings, possibly not from some handsome, arrogant spy, but from a real live burglar? No? All you have to value are a few firearms and a rifle, you say. Well, even more reason to have a place to lock them the way, from burglars, protection of fire and prying little hands?
Owning a gun is a, nowadays, as common as owning a car. In fact, there are quite a few people who, whilst they own a gun, don’t even own a car. And owning a gun can be, as we know from numerous media news flashes over the world, a dangerous pastime. Dangerous, not only for the owner of the gun but for any unfortunate passerby or novice that happens to come across the firearm. It makes sense then that you should keep your firearms and rifles locked away and of course, the most obvious solution would be a gun safe.
But here are a few dilemmas that most gun owners have. They want to either have quick access to their gun, which some safes don’t allow, or they don’t want a cumbersome safe in their home, taking up valuable space.
Many innovative people have thought of hiding their gun safes in a particular room in the house. Most times, it’s the garage, hidden behind the hanging tools or in an old cupboard. Sometimes the bedroom is used, behind grandmother’s old original painting. Some have been very inventive and even used their beds as the hiding place. If you find that your gun collection is taking up the entire garage, you may want to opt for a gun room, which you could lock up with a safe door.
Whichever method you decide to choose, hiding a safe requires some DIY skills, unless you employ a handyman.
For the purposes of this article, we are going to explore the options for a hidden wall gun safe and whether you decide to give it a try yourself or pay someone to install it, we think you will find a few ideas that will work for you and your home.
The Classic Behind The Painting Safe
Well, ironically or obviously enough, whichever way you want to look at it, there weren’t many pictures of safes hidden behind paintings. It’s safe to say, excuse the pun that most people don’t want to publicize where they have hidden their safe. Nevertheless, if you are intending to mount your new gun safe into a wall, you want to buy a safe that is advertised as either a “recessed wall hidden” or “hidden wall” safe. This way, you will know that the safe has a flush recessed front that can be built into any wall, and the door of the safe sits flush to the wall, once securely fitted into the allowed space.
With regards to making that hole in the wall, we suggest you do this with caution as you don’t want to me bashing big gaps into just any wall in your house, where important plumbing pipes may run or even worse, electrical wiring. The wall in question needs to also be stable, supporting wall and not a drywall, for obvious reasons.
Now, once you’ve secured your safe in, neatened and flushed it perfectly to the wall, you can position a slightly bigger sized painting over the safe so that it’s well hidden. The painting, ideally, needs to be framed or boxed so that the actual back of the painting sits away from the wall. This way it gives that little bit of space between the painting and the dial or keypad of the safe. Most hidden wall safes have really flush locking consoles, but you wouldn’t want it poking against the painting and invariably giving away its hiding space.
Mirror Mirror On The Wall Hidden Safe
You could also put a mirror over the recessed wall safe like this clever fellow did. Most times, a mirror won’t be looked behind, as much as a painting would.
But, in this case, he didn’t use a safe behind the mirror, just a cabinet. In his defense, he did also install a hidden keypad in a nearby picture to control a solenoid lock that opens the mirror “door”. A real “MacGyver” this chap!
You can see here how he put this all together and could even follow his lead if you so wish to.
Coming Out Of The Closet Hidden Safe
If you have a walk-in closet or any tight walk-in space, like a broom closet or jacket closet, it may be a good place to install your wall safe.
This makes the access more difficult for any would-be burglar. He won’t be able to move around much inside here and will be nicely cornered should you happen to him. But please, remember safety first. You may want to lock him in there and then call 911 then trying sort out the thief yourself.
The suggestion here is to stack a few boxes in front of this safe so that it’s not in sight, thereby also making it a difficult safe to get to, should he spot it behind the boxes. You could also install a hanging rail in front of the safe where your jackets would live. (Think that Narnia movie, where they waded through the jackets to find a hidden passage. Ok, so yours won’t be that “out there”.) Moving on. The boxes, though, may make it a trifle awkward to get to the safe when you need to, but it will be nicely hidden this way. Another suggestion would be to stack boxes on wheels in front, that way it’s easy to roll them out and back in, as you need.
If you’re going with the hidden wall gun safe inside a broom closet, we recommend you build another little midway door, which you can just push open to get to the safe and stack your cleaning materials in front of it. Again, some organization would be needed so that it’s not a mission each time you need to open the safe.
Whichever burglar you are trying to keep out, its best to give them as little temptation as possible, so get working on that hidden wall gun safe!
