We've Been Thinking About Our Doorbell

Or lack thereof.

Last July, in the Maryland summer heat, before T&H had bought their house, when it was just another MLS listing to review, this house had a doorbell. Or, at least, it had a doorbell fixture.

Please note that the front door also had a door knob. Sometime between that July day and the day they became official homeowners, both disappeared. The knob broken off, the bell fixture removed completely.

Before getting into this business of knobs and bells, let's take a moment to check out that handsome knocker.

My favorite thing about this knocker is that people actually use it. And it works just the way it was meant to. Loudly. Of course, the resonance is helped along by the fact that our door has been weathered thin as a reed, and most of the house is an empty echo chamber.

My second favorite thing about this knocker is its bizarro-world resemblance to Pee Wee Herman's trusty, sneak-past-the-butler, automatic knocking device.

Oh yeah?! Where're they hosin' 'im down?!

But back to the front door and the rest of its hardware. After T&H bought the house, one of the first things we chose to do was clear the garage of debris. The space was about, oh, three feet deep with trash and yard clippings and someone's once-cared for belongings, under a roof riddled with leaks. Beneath the surface, the pile had been nearly entirely converted to soil by happy worms and roly polys.

While we destroyed the worms' and roly polys' home, and carted it off, in 4 truckloads, to a city sanitation yard, Toby discovered a door among the debris. This door has a great, only-thing-holding-up-the-garage-roof story to go with it, but I'll save that for another day. Today what we care about is hardware, and this door sure had it, Roanoke style.

As soon as I could, I replaced our beheaded door knob with the Roanoke pattern knob from the door in the garage.

We'll wait until we replace the door to add the matching door plates.

With the door knob problem solved, I really needed a doorbell, because I can't be running through the house and checking the front door everytime I hear some banging. (This is a construction site, after all.) For the time being I have installed a very ugly, very economical, wireless doorbell.

We gotta get this fixed, people!

For a while now, we have been entertaining the thought of installing a Victorian era twist doorbell, in the same pattern as our door knob and plate. However, twist door bells would typically be mounted on the door, exactly where our mail slot goes. The bell itself is mounted on the back side of the door, and the turning fixture is mounted on the front. The two are connected through the door by a spindle, and turning the handle on the front fixture mechanically rings the bell on the other side of the door.

Can't have a doorbell and a mail slot in the same place!

We can't get rid of the mail slot. That's pretty necessary. So H suggested we put the doorbell just above, like so:

 

Another option is to forget the twist bells, and install a push button bell where the old lion once was. There is a company on ebay that actually makes a Roanoke style, push button doorbell, with a lion as the button. Here it is photoshopped onto our door frame:

They're all starting to look the same to me, but my gut says to leave it on the door frame.

What do you think? Any other ideas or suggestions? Please help us!