I've had an idea for the door that leads from our open plan living room / dining room / kitchen area into the spare bedroom cum AirBnB - a secret bookcase door. A bit like this.
The current door is oak with an aluminium ship's porthole that I inserted into it, but we've hung a curtain across it for soundproofing and permanently locked it for privacy, due to strangers occasionally inhabiting the accommodation on the other side of it. We're running short of bookcase space anyway and this would be a neat solution, plus it's a bit quirky.
I've also had an idea to save on heating cost. When we built the house we decided to have limestone flooring in the kitchen and bathrooms, with oak flooring everywhere else. Now, while limestone flooring is ideal for transmitting heat from the underfloor heating, wood acts as an insulator. With low cost electricity, this isn't really a problem, but with electricity reaching unprecedented prices, it may well be time to make some minor adjustment.
The idea is to remove the oak flooring where our large coffee table is (the coffee table sits on a rug, which adds even more insulation) and replace it with limestone. This would in effect create a 3 square metre radiator in the centre of the living space. OK, the floor is already a radiator, but the thermal conductivity of the limestone is much higher.
The rug could still be placed over the limestone as the overall thermal output would be increased. Not sure about the aesthetics though.
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