Our very old house has a mechanical turn bell kind of like this one, but nobody ever uses it, they all knock.
Those Archaians can just puck off.
My house’s built-in doorbell does not work. Some years ago I added a wireless doorbell to replace it. So I voted that my doorbell works, but it could also be argued that my doorbell doesn’t work.
Vaguely interesting to me, but 4 months ago I would have answered “No” to the working doorbell. It had been acting… weird… (a barely audible electrical buzzing, no ringing) so with my FiL’s help, we bought a new ring unit, opened the plastic cover on the box in the hallway, and replaced the unit. Now it works fine.
I keep being tempted to get a Ring or the like, but our 1982 house has old, original wiring, and we’d probably have to do a non-trivial amount of work to get it to interface, or worry about replacing batteries.
Not to mention far too many higher priority pieces of work!
I love my Ring.
If the wiring exists for the old doorbell - and it seems as if it does - there is no need to replace it (the wiring). Installing a new doorbell, including a Ring, is just a matter of disconnecting and connecting two low voltage wires (although there may be mounting issues to consider).
1982 ain’t that old, says my 1953 house.
mmm
No doorbell. Our house is set well back from the road, the property is fenced, and we have a gate at the end of the driveway (all of which is more about keeping animals in than people out). I don’t get casual visitors.
1953 ain’t that old, says my 1894 house.
No doorbell. You can knock. The dog’s probably barking.
1894 ain’t that old, says my 1760 house.
I already answered the doorbell question, but I’d add that since our town created a no-solicitation list a few years ago, nobody comes by.
Same here. I just wish delivery people would use the damn thing.
I kinda-sorta knew that ice hockey was meant to be the #4 sport, but wasn’t certain. Hockey is just not on my radar. My dad took me to see quite a few Baltimore Clippers games when I was a kid, and I really enjoyed it. But I can’t endure watching it on TV so I haven’t seen a hockey game in fifty-plus years.
Baseball is my favorite, in person or on TV, with the State Religion of Football close behind.
I voted for the duck at the wedding. Seems like it would be the least disruptive, though I have no clue about capybara behavior.
Our doorbell works, but it’s rung so infrequently it’s always “what that heck was that?” when someone rings it.
We had a traditional, “wired” doorbell in our house when we moved into it in '96. About 20 years ago, the button end of the system failed. I replaced it myself, but the wiring in the door frame was old (and very short), and it turned out to be a PITA project to do the replacement.
When the new button gave up the ghost, four or five years ago, I decided that I didn’t want to mess around with that wiring again. I bought a wireless system, which has a battery-powered button box that’s stuck to the door frame with 3M tape, and a chime that plugs into a wall outlet. It works just fine.
I have a wireless Blink video doorbell system sitting in a box; I got it when I was involved in pitching that business for my ad agency, two years ago. I have yet to install it.
I figured somebody was going to top that. I almost added to the post that it would probably be somebody from Europe; although there are some 1760 houses in the USA.
I’m last place on a dead-end road. Occasionally random people do come by, but not often. (Neighbors and delivery people do show up occasionally. Delivery people are instructed, by sign and sometimes directly by me, that if I don’t show up right away just leave stuff in this unlocked entry hall out of the rain, thanks.)
3rd Rock for the alien TV show poll; for .6 of a second I considered Alf, but in retrospect knowing how much every performer hated working on the set of that show made me not choose it.
Agree, with enthusiasm! I lived In Boston until ‘85~those were the years. I went to many a game at the Boston Garden (it’s gone now).
Went to some Bruins hockey games too, also exciting and fun. There is no sports fanatic like a Celtics or Bruins fanatic.
I played varsity field hockey in college.
1894 ain’t that old, says my 1880 house.
In the 1970s I lived in a house in Boston that was built in 1650, the James Blake House. Does that count? We were the resident caretakers while in graduate school. Friends, also in architectural history graduate school, lived in Paul Revere house in the North End of Boston.
Now that is some fancy college housing!
(Especially if they’d updated the plumbing.)
Electricity even!
My 1973 house does not have a doorbell, which honestly seems a bit odd for a house from that era. There was a rectangle on the front door frame that looked like the spot where a doorbell used to be (I assume it must been a modern wireless one, because there’s no wiring for a doorbell there), but the previous occupants must have taken it with them when they moved out. The house was a foreclosure, so the previous occupants took pretty much everything they could, including the light fixture from one of the bathrooms and the medicine cabinet from the other.
I thought about getting a new wireless doorbell, but the battery life concerns me somewhat, and honestly I’ve been getting by just fine without one.
I picked 3rd Rock From the Sun in the alien sitcom poll, although admittedly that’s the only one I ever really watched regularly. I’ve seen a few episodes of Alf and Mork and Mindy (the latter must have been reruns).
I looked it up, that’s very cool!
It was an incredible experience for an Iowa girl. I could lie in bed at night and look at the fireplace and the huge timbers still artful and mighty after centuries and feel kinship with all the others that had lived and loved and birthed and died and made love in that room. It was like the house was a person itself. It certainly witnessed a lot of history.
It was never hot in the summer (small windows and very thick walls), it could be chilly in the winters, but that is what down comforters are for. I especially loved the twisty turny enclosed staircase that went up to the two bedchambers on the second floor. It always felt like a secret staircase built for castle intrigue.
The Blake house, even 325 years old, gave solid construction a whole new definition. We don’t build ‘em like they used to.