apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Someone made one of these for me by hollowing out an old book. If only I'd used it-- one day my apartment was burglarized. All the person took was my engagement ring which I wasn't wearing yet because it had to be sized. It had belonged to my husband's mother, who died when my husband was a teenager.

I often wonder if the thief would have turned over all my book shelves if the prize wasn't in the most obvious place (the top drawer of the dresser). Or would I be wearing it now?

I would love to make a couple of these myself...I found this site that has an online tutorial...

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/02/turn-book-into-secret-storage-box.html

I did this myself back when I was in junior high school, less because I had anything to hide than because the idea of hiding something was cool. Of course, I didn't want to wreck any of my own books, so I just used an old book that had been gathering dust way up on top shelf in the book room since before I could remember, one that I had never seen anyone reading anyway.

After a few hours of careful cutting with my Exacto knife, I got impatient & ripped out the guts of the book, made a wooden box to fit within the binding, glued it in & covered the top edge with balsa wood from the hobby shop, which has slight linear texture like pages, then glued a little silk ribbon into the binding to add a litle extra flourish. I was quite pleased with myself. Talk about trash-to-treasure!

Unfortunately, my project wasn't a secret for long. Like it says in the Bible, "There is nothing hidden which shall not be revealed" and when it was, boy, was there hell to pay. The dusty book I happened to choose turned out to be a rare volume that had been inscribed at length by its obscure author--well, he was obscure to me--to a major figure in early-20th century politics--whom I'd also never heard of--and which book, subsequently, had been given by its recipient to my great-grandmother. After all, as I told my mom, it wasn't my fault that I didn't recognize any of the names.

Anyway, this kind of wide-eyed ignorance is what always runs through my mind when somebody tells me they love those trash-to-treasure shows. They should come with a disclaimer: Don't try this at home.

Years ago, my father made one of these out of "Honor Thy Father" by Gay Talese, and put it on a shelf in his home office. In it was my mom's best jewelry, including some things that she had inherited. Eventually, they decided to renovate the room, and my dad got rid of a lot of stuff in the office...including "Honor Thy Father." Moral of the story: if you've got valuables that you don't plan to use frequently, stash them in a safe deposit box.

Is the pen inside from the Sheraton Park Tower in London? I love those pens and always take them when I stay there for work.