Ding-Dong

When Adam and I were installing the cedar shutters to the front of our house, Adam pointed out how cruddy our doorbell button was looking.  

I hadn't even noticed until he pointed it out, but he was right.  The plastic was yellowing and a crack was starting to form on the part that you push to ring the doorbell.  It never crossed my mind that you could replace a doorbell button.  It turns out that it is a very simple project and can add a lot of charm to the front of your house.

I learned a couple things about shopping for replacement doorbell buttons.  One thing is that the distance between the screw holes can vary.  We initially bought one at Lowe's, but had to return it because the distance between the screw holes didn't match up to our old ones.  If you are adding new holes, this doesn't matter.  But we wanted to use the anchors that were already in our brick instead of filling in the old holes and drilling new ones.  So my advice would be to figure out what measurements you need before you go shopping and to bring along a tape measure.

The second thing I learned is that some doorbell buttons have parts that stick out on the back.  I picked one at at Home Depot, but realized I will have to return it as well because the back of it stuck out too much.  I finally hit the jackpot with a flush mount doorbell button from Ace.  I tried to find it on Ace's website, but couldn't.  Here it is on the manufacturer's website.      

I liked the bronze finish.  The shape seemed a bit fancier and would fit in with the front of our house. Since our previous button was hard-wired, we needed to make sure we selected a wired button.  Some doorbell buttons are battery-operated.  You just have to remove your old doorbell button to find out.

Adam was going to replace the doorbell button, but he had to work late.  I thought to myself, this can't be that hard.  So I went for it.  

I knew enough to make sure I turned off the breaker that controlled the doorbell button.  It was a bit tricky figuring out which was the correct breaker.  The labels weren't all that helpful.  I tried a few random ones first, with no luck.  So then I went about it with a more systematic approach.  I started at the top left corner and worked my way down.  I didn't find the correct breaker until halfway down the right side.  

To make things more fun, Jazzy barked each time I rung the doorbell to see if I had cut off the power to it.  So things went like this:  Go downstairs, flip a breaker, go upstairs, ring the doorbell, listen to Jazzy bark, go back downstairs, flip a different breaker, go upstairs, ring the doorbell, listen to Jazzy bark, and so on and so forth.  I certainly got my exercise!   

Once I had the correct breaker flipped, I unscrewed the old doorbell button to see what I was working with.  There were two wires attached to two screws.  It didn't appear to matter which screw went to each wire after carefully reading the instructions on the back of the doorbell button.  So I unscrewed the screws until the wires were released.  I then attached the wires to the screws on the new doorbell button.    

From there, all I had to do was screw the button into the anchors that were already in the brick.  It was as easy as that!  I was pretty proud of myself for tackling this project.  I was a bit daunted by doing something electrical without Adam looking over my shoulder to make sure I was doing it right, but I'm so glad I tried it!  It was simple and I feel pretty darn accomplished.   

After it was all screwed in place, I flipped the breaker back on to make sure it worked.  It lit up and rang like a champ when I pushed it!  

While I don't plan to tackle any complex electrical plans in the near future, I do have a little more confidence under my belt to try even more new things.  I try to be a good role model for Jazzy. Unfortunately, I think she was more enamored of Bob mowing his lawn across the street than my lesson to try new things.  Oh well.