A few years later, during the addition of a major new wing to the house, my father added a second secret cellar here, replacing the bricks with a faux-brick door; the keyhole was concealed behind a dustpan hanging from a peg.
The couple's Chinese friends were flabbergasted, he said, by his desire to reuse old bricks, doors and wooden beams in the renovation of the 200-year-old building.
The house/flat I grew up in... was on a council estate in Kent, semi-detached, red brick, red door.
(In the process, some historical gems, like a metal and brick fire door found at 1871, were left to meld with the newly designed areas).
His first one-man show, in Milan in 1993, featured a bricked-over door and a motorized toy bear riding back and forth on a wire.
In a Westminster debate, Mr Field said landlords should "brick up" doors and "knock down the walls" in defiance.
Listings for homes built before 1900 are far more likely to mention exposed brick, pocket doors (which open by sliding into a "pocket" in the nearby wall rather than swinging open), carriage houses, and grand staircases than homes built in more recent decades.
Oh well, at least the tax is basically unworkable, with some councils already pledging not to evict people because of it, a Labour MP suggesting that residents can brick up doors and knock down walls to alter the number of bedrooms they have and campaigners encouraging people to get really pernickety with tape measures.
Mr. Burgess also managed to incorporate recycled materials like bricks and doors he found on the street.
Although most of their property was well maintained — neatly trimmed grass, freshly painted brick-red doors, newly gleaming paneling in the front office — one wall looked atrocious.
After the amendments ministers have had to accept, it is like a car resting on piles of bricks, its doors off and its engine in pieces.
