The Postman Always Rings

Our big excitement last month was moving the doorbell. The fun just never stops.

For as long as we've been here, the doorbell chime has been mounted more or less in the midpoint of the house. It's down low on a wall in one of the 2nd-floor rooms. You can hear it from just about anywhere, so no problems there. It wasn't very nice to look at, though, and the doorbell wires had to follow a remarkably twisted route to get there. Let me explain.

From the doorbell button by the front door, the wires go through a little hole in the wood trim, down the length of the door frame until they reach the crawlspace under the house, then 30' over to a transformer that dangles in midair, supported only by its wires. From there, the wires went up through a hole in the floor, appeared along the 1st-floor molding, ran up a door frame to the ceiling, through a hole, reappeared in a 2nd-floor closet, through the closet wall, along a bedroom wall, through another door frame, and along some more floor molding before finally reaching the doorbell chime itself.

I can't imagine how (or why) someone worked so hard to place the doorbell in exactly that location. It's just nuts.

I wanted to move the doorbell to a less-conspicuous place, and, incidentally, clean up the circuitous wiring. We found a good spot just 10' away near the stairs. Since the space under the stairs is hollow, it provides plenty of room to mount the doorbell and run the wires. And, since the stairs are also right next to the old dumbwaiter shaft, I've got a big vertical runway all the way down to the crawlspace. Voila! Instant wiring chase.

Dropping the new wires (as in, literally dropping them down the shaft until they hit the dirt under the house) was super easy. The only tricky part was disconnecting the old doorbell wires and replacing most of that old rat's nest. Oh, and I replaced the little DC transformer and screwed it down to a floor joist instead of just letting it just hang there in midair. Sheesh.

We tested the doorbell and it's louder! I think all that old wire was putting up some serious resistance, so the new wire provides noticeably more current. An added bonus. But mostly I just like tidying up the old wires. We could probably recycle the copper for some real money.