Smoke, Sweat And A Secret Door
In early June of 2022, Jason Naftzinger of Easton, Pennsylvania, was standing atop a set of outdoor stairs on the side of his home when chaos ensued on his quiet, suburban street. A behemoth, 1,000-pound slab of granite (10 feet long and more than four feet wide), hanging from the boom of a crane, began relentlessly spinning in midair as Naftzinger nervously watched on, hoping it wouldn’t go plunging to the street below. The piece was designated to top a bar he built in his nearly finished cigar loft above his garage. It was the last, critical leg of a grueling two-year process that included home remodeling work, meticulous planning and DIY. The fate of his dream smoking room hung in the balance of this expensive, now-spiraling slab of granite. But thankfully, after a few moments, the pirouette mercifully came to a halt, and the stone was safely delivered to the second floor. A week later, Naftzinger’s long journey concluded when he put the final touches on his lounge, and the hulking granite bar took center stage.
Naftzinger, 44, lives in a picturesque suburban neighborhood woven amongst hilly, tight, winding roads just behind the campus of Lafayette College. His home, boasting new navy-blue siding, pops like a place fresh off of a full makeover. Standing in his driveway wearing his work-from-home outfit—a grey T-shirt, gym shorts and sneakers—Naftzinger instantly gives off a sense of welcoming casualness. He begins leading a visitor through a gate heading towards the backyard and the entryway to his “home office.” Naftzinger turns right just past the gate and heads up the wooden stairs that flank the outside of his double-door garage. When he reaches a doorway one story above, he promptly es through, revealing a 450-square-foot loft.
Naftzinger points out the highlights of his cigar space: leather reclining chairs, a custom-built hardwood table, a half bath, laminate floors, two flat-screen televisions, a large island bar, a kitchen area and three grand humidors. Also there is his buddy, Rob Mahoney. “I could either be sitting at home answering emails or sitting here enjoying a cigar,” says Mahoney. While Naftzinger is comparatively subdued in dress and character, Mahoney has arms covered in colorful tattoos, pierced ears, a thick beard and bright clothing, with a persona to match. Both of the longtime friends emanate an effortless, down-to-earth nature.
Naftzinger heads for his row of humidors and pulls out a box of Trinidad Espíritu Series No. 3 Belicosos and starts to light up. The Rafael Nodal and A.J. Fernandez cigar is his favorite size to smoke. He’s a die-hard fan of the latter, Nicaraguan cigarmaker. As he looks around the room, Naftzinger defends its state of decor limbo—he says he’s waiting for the right item to set the tone for his presently bare, steel blue walls, perhaps a framed Cigar Aficionado story. Then he turns his focus to the real gem of the room. “The coolest part is actually something you don’t see,” says Naftzinger. He’s referring to his Murphy door or, more specifically, a secret ageway hidden in plain sight.
This feature—seemingly straight out of the boardgame Clue—is disguised as a bookcase. It’s controlled by a fingerprint scanner, which, when touched by Naftzinger or his wife Helen, unlocks an opening to what was their master bedroom closet. Now, a hybrid closet-corridor leads to bifold doors guarding the bedroom.
Naftzinger knew he wanted a ageway connected to the main house, but the idea for a disguised door, in particular, came later. He didn’t want his bedroom to serve as a thruway for meandering guests. “If I have people in here, I don’t really even want them to know it’s there,” he explains. But for Naftzinger and his wife, the opening, sometimes called a Murphy door after the disguised beds that fold into the wall, offers a convenient form of entry and exit.
The couple bought the house in August of 2019. In the fall of 2020, they embarked on a remodeling effort that extended until June of 2022. While contractors worked on adding new siding, windows, garage doors and redoing the back patio, Naftzinger contemplated how he could incorporate a cigar lounge. His first idea, a two-story shed with an upper-level smoking lounge, was quashed when he learned his township would require a $1,500 variance application. Then, his wife posited “What if we put a second story on our garage?” He realized she was onto something.
He talked it over with the contractor and they agreed to tackle it together. The builders would tear off the garage roof, add exterior wall framing and rough in electrical and insulation. The rest, Naftzinger would handle himself, saving a pretty penny in the process. The lifelong Pennsylvanian is no stranger to elbow grease. As a son of a mechanic, Naftzinger honed his handyman skills from an early age. “I grew up working on cars with him all the time, we fixed and worked on everything,” says Naftzinger. Fresh out of high school, he became a heating-ventilation-and-air-conditioning technician, a career he maintained for nearly a decade. “Being a technician, I learned a lot of things that relate to this, like the ventilation, the plumbing, even the electrical,” he says. But eventually, he transitioned into sales, a career he continues today as territory sales manager for a boiler manufacturer. The travel-heavy job keeps him on the road, where, before his cigar room, he was resigned to smoke. “I don’t know how I did a decade of smoking in the car,” he says. “Suffering, burning myself constantly, burning a hole in the seat of the car, all of that.”
It’s not hard to imagine that when the contractors finished putting together the foundation of the cigar room, Naftzinger was content to use it in its bare-bones fashion as a daily spot to smoke. He bought a pair of cheap leather chairs, ran an extension cord up to power a light and fans, added a propane heater and set up a folding table with a television on top. He would use this shell of a cigar room until March of 2022, when the contractors returned to install the drywall. Naftzinger finished the remaining work from April to mid-June. All said and done, he framed all interior walls, finished electrical, lighting and flooring, set up the plumbing, built the main bar and some cabinets, added the opening for the hidden door and installed a custom exhaust and fresh air system.
The heavy workload came naturally to Naftzinger. “I’m a very independent person, I don’t ask for help much,” he says, though he credits his wife for the idea and the motivation. “She’s actually the reason it’s here, she’s the one who pushed me to do it.” In the end, the cigar room is a luxury they both enjoy, though he says his wife rarely smokes. “If I’m home, we’re in here every single day.”
Naftzinger’s cigar collection, which he estimates is around 3,500 cigars, is divided amongst two cabinet humidors and one colossal trunk humidor situated in the room. But this wasn’t always the case. “I used to have 30 small humidors that I had to keep going all of the time, they were all over the house,” he says.
When he was barely of legal age, Naftzinger got his start with machine-made cigars before upgrading to . “I’m very heavy into Nicaraguan stuff now.” He’s not kidding either, with the vast majority of his inventory coming from A.J. Fernandez, as well as Padrón, Drew Estate, Joya de Nicaragua, Rocky Patel, Oliva, Espinosa and other, mostly Nicaraguan, producers. He says the Padrón 50th Anniversary takes the title as his favorite.
Mahoney sums up the room: “I like this space because it feels attainable for the average person.” And therein lies the magic. It’s accessible for a man willing to utilize his own two hands. Here, the journey stands toe-to-toe with the finished product.
