Doorbells

When we moved into our house, the doorbell didn't work. 
It was the least of our problems, as many things in the house were not working at the time. Basic things, like running water and gas. We let the doorbell go, and counted on determined visitors to walk around to the side and rap on the kitchen window.
This worked for a little while, until I came home one day and heard a disturbing buzz. The buzz seemed to be emanting from the depths of the house, somewhere in the hollow space between the hall and bathroom, yet slightly above it. This was roughly in the vicinity of the smoke alarm, but when I opened it up and removed the batteries, the noise continued. And it did not appear to be coming from the smoke alarm. I ran downstairs and up, pressing my ear to walls and floors. I went into my bedroom to get a stepstool, and realized the noise was louder here. I followed it, and discovered, screwed to the ceiling deep inside the bedroom closet, the thing that buzzed.
Why anyone would put the inner workings of a doorbell on the ceiling in the bedroom closet was a mystery. Why the thing was buzzing, when it did not appear to be connected to a source of power in any obvious way was a mystery. Why, when attempting to cut the wire that did not seem to go anywhere, we nearly got electrocuted was a mystery (however it proved beyond any reasonable doubt that there was a source of power somewhere). In fact, there was little about this that was not mysterious. Cut the wires we did, despite it's resistance, and that was the end of that.
However, after a couple of doorbellless (that's 3 l's) years, and several missed overnight packages, I decided that I would like to have a doorbell after all. So I purchased a wireless one for $10. It worked great for a little while. Until our new neighbors moved in.
Our new neighbors purchased a large and opulent house that was erected on top of a much smaller and modest house that formerly sat on the lot next door. With their house came a suitably opulent doorbell, one of those things with long chimes, that plays several bars of a symphony when you depress the button. The unforseen complication arose from the fact, that is operated on the same frequency as our $10 gizmo. So, every time the Shaw's got a pizza, we would run hopefully to the door. Needless to say, this got boring pretty fast.
So, we picked up Poseidon at a junk yard this summer. He's fierce, and low-tech, and pretty darn loud.

Comments

[kim]

Beautiful! Good solution too.