…which is why I’ve spent it on the house. Err.
No, it goes like this. Over the past few days I’ve worked like a dog (one of those spit-turning dogs (like so) to get the house ready for the plasterer, this involved a 31 hour day on Monday, and essentially working from 0900 ’til ten/elevenish Tuesday and Wednesday. Today I woke up and hurt, pretty much all over.
But this is the result:
Unfortunately, the reason I can take those photos now is…the plasterer’s not only not here, but not answered his text message saying ‘uh, when will you be here’.
On the plus side, we have slum chic:
Yes, it’s a sink, with taps and Hot and Cold running water in the kitchen! I love it to bits. Even considering that it actually drains into a large bucket which we empty by hand (I couldn’t get the old lead plumbing off the bottom of the basin).
Anyhow, so today, as part of my day off I decided to do something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I made the Frankenbell. We’ve got one of those Freidland wireless doorbell, and as with my last encounter with one of these beasties I’ve already had several conversations with people knocking on the door which went like this:
“Oh, hello… Have you been there long?”
“Err, a while. I rang the bell”
“Did you? I didn’t hear it… hang on” [Presses Bell – Bell chimes]
“Hrm… oh well, err, sorry. Come in”
Which leads to the potential for people to have gone having been unmet at the door and a degree of paranoia about the bell. However, our house came equipped with a 1970s (I’d guess) doorbell. A quick test with a new battery revealed that it did, in fact work. And so my morning (and lunchtime) went like this:
First up I extracted the wireless doorbell transmitter from the doorbell switch:
I stripped down and started to clean up the chiming mechanism and battery container:
I added a relay in place of the doorbell switch to the transmitter circuit; and notched a small space in the end of the chiming box for the transmitter:
And then I put the casing back together with it all assembled and installed. Then I spent some time laughing slightly maniacally and pressing the doorbell (which now goes “DING DONG, diing doong” (proper metal chiming bars, synthetic modern remote doorbell). It’s hardly a phenomenally complex hack, and really I should have got a 3v regulator to drive the remote doorbell transmitter, rather than leaving it with the now rather silly requirement for 3 separate batteries. But hey.
