Secret Libraries
I'm over the open-concept home reno shows - give me secret libraries.
Welcome to my second substack. Soundtrack to this post: Joy Crookes
1. Twelve months into this pandemic and I am an expert home renovator. I can tell you how to check under carpets for hardwood floors and the benefits of turning kitchen pass through bars into islands. If I had a nail gun, I’m pretty sure I could shiplap your wall and I have spent so many hour imagining how to scrape off popcorn ceilings that I’m pretty sure I could do it. I haven’t bought a home to flip or intensely renovated my rental apartment – I just have been watching a lot of home renovation shows on the television this pandemic. So much so, I’m confident my skills would impress you, sight unseen.
2. The first few months of the pandemic I went to stay at my dad’s house in the burb. There’s not much my sisters and I can watch with my dad – no kissing, no violence, nothing haram – which means most of what we can watch in the living room are either Hallmark movies, nature documentaries, or PG rated family movies. The only thing that kept all four of us lingering the living room was home renovation shows. There’s no sex, no gore, you get that feel good feeling and it ends with a tidy bow. We would all easily get sucked into watching hours of a show. Here we were sitting in our California ranch home that hadn’t been updated since it was built in the 80s – with shag carpet, white tile countertops, irreplaceable window boxes – and we all suddenly had opinions on farmhouse kitchens, shiplap walls, and hardwood floors.
3. Trapped indoors during quarantine, these home renovation shows provide a sense of comfort. They all come to a finality at the end of 30 minutes. You might not agree with the design – but they do come to a conclusion - unlike this on-going pandemic. In that way, they remind me of Hallmark Christmas movies – a satisfactory predictability with a happy ending, and maybe some happy tears. Most shows usually have two points of tension and I gasp in shock every time a light fixture falls unpredictably or termites have eaten through the supporting wood beam, as if I too was in total surprise. Each show usually also has a “personalized gift” component to the show – fingerprinted paintings, or old photos, or a dining table made from the salvaged wood from the butler’s pantry (and who kept butlers in pantries, after all?).
4. All these shows are basically unrealistic scenarios in my hometown of Southern California – one here would never be able to buy a house for $100,000 and invest another $100,000 for a majestic 3 bedroom forever home. But in these small towns in red states, this kind of buying into the American dream is still possible, these shows tell me – you just have to turn a blind eye to the red MAGA hats and getting your lawn burned with a cross. This is not mentioned as a coastal side-eyed shade as much as an internal debate I have with myself on what it would take for me to be able to ever afford home ownership as a single Brown woman with no family money with a career in in non-profits and deep in student debt. What risks would it take for me to move there?
5. Though the popular shows have glossy twin brothers or the shiny blonde couple – my favorite shows have a little bit more quirk. There is Treehouse Masters where Pete makes sky-high mansions in backyard forests around the country. People will invite him to their yard and he will scope out a perfect large tree to truss out and build upon. It is a goal of mine to rent one for a summer write my epic novel in one of these treehouses. On Discovery Channel’s Lost Mine’s: Restored, two burly men go to mining country in Colorado and flip buildings on claimed land – both fulfilling my dream of mining for gold and exploring caves. My favorite now is Escape to the Chateau on HGTV where this rockabilly British couple buy a 5-story 45-room 19th century French castle. The best part of their renovation is that they are not stuck on a particular style or authenticity and are not shy about their eccentricities. As they dig through the rambling castle they are always stumbling on something new. A penchant for taxidermy and weird art makes it incredibly tacky a times, but their DIY tenacity makes you want to root for them.
6. I am stunned, regularly, when in renovating this old mansions and castles, there is never a scene where the protagonist holds up the blueprint for the house and slowly looks around and realizes that there is a wall where there shouldn’t be. They knock on the wall, and realize it is hollow and actually there is an entire hidden hallway. Maybe it’s because I’m of the Scooby Doo generation who was mandated to read Ann Frank’s Diary in school – so now I’m conditioned to believe secret rooms are something to be expected in old homes. The closest I’ve seen is when they keep a dumbwaiter original to the house or they turn the space under the stairs a playhouse for kids.
7. I’ve always wanted to have a secret small library, wall to wall filled with books and cozy reading nook by a bright bay window and a plush armchair. All hidden behind a secret revolving bookshelf.
8. Hear me out Discovery+ television execs – a home renovation show of secret spaces. Sconces which are secretly levers that open up a swinging door into a passage behind the living room wall. Or a library that can only be found by pulling on a green book on the third shelf. Screw the open concept big room construction – let’s make lots of rooms, small rooms, closets, hidden nooks and crannies. I want to add a hallway behind the wall and a painting where you can look at people through the eyes of the portrait. Let’s bring bag dumbwaiters, and second staircases, and butlers pantries. How about a wardrobe that has a door in the back that opens to the garden? Or trapdoors in the floor that open up to a safe.
9. I wonder if open concept became the trend because these people of privilege never had to worry about where to hide. I’ve spent so much of my life looking for hiding spots, just in case.
10. I think, of course, cute cozy places. But as a Muslim Brown single woman living alone, I’ve spent may hours daydreaming on places I would hide in my apartment. It’s not fantastical, I don’t think. In the Midwest, people have basements to hide from tornados and in California we have glassless hallways and tables to hide under for earthquakes. In the 70s, nuclear bomb bunkers were all the rage. With the rise of White Supremacy, fear of doxing, and an airborne viral pandemic – it’s not silly to think of hiding places. The uber-rich of course, have panic rooms. But the rest of us have to make do. Where do people of color hide?
11. Anyways. There must be a market for a Muslim woman home renovation show to create secret library hideaways and hiding places to escape the KKK. It seems like the most entertaining television, don’t you think?