Custom in Seattle
Here is our beautiful new Electra Chime hanging on our wall. I'm super appreciative of both how flexible and gracious you were with the light wood -poplar finish as well as the quick delivery. It's absolutely stunning and perfect for our house.
Thank you again
Carrie B., Seattle, Washington
Custom Metro in Poplar for a North West Mid Century Home. Interested in a custom ElectraChime of your own? Contact us.
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ElectraChime Long Chime Doorbells Made to Measure for Your Home.
ElectraChime can supply shorter—or longer— length bells to fit your individual space requirements.
Standard ElectraChime lengths at approximately 39 inches from the top of the cover to the bottom of the longest bell are ideally sized for most existing recesses. Occasionally, a shorter niche is encountered.
This Columbus, Ohio home has a niche approximately 38 inches tall. We were able to provide an ElectraChime Ribbon doorbell with the bells reduced in size to an overall height of 36 inches to perfectly fit the niche. An ElectraChime can be as short as 24 inches although the shorter the bells, the higher the pitch.
If you need a custom sized ElectraChime to fit a space limited by features in your house, such as a thermostat, light switch or molding, we're here to help Contact ElectraChime.
Does Your Doorbell Match Your Floors?
On occasion, a client requests an ElectraChime to match existing architectural elements. In this installation, we executed a Metro cover in white oak and used the same stain as the refinished original 1930s floors.
Paired with three nickel-plated brass bells, this Oakland, California doorbell niche is stylishly retro-modern with a kind of "always been there" aesthetic.
Contact us about a doorbell to meet your own needs.
How high is too high?
The answer isn't entirely existential when it comes to doorbells. Still, there is no single answer. ElectraChimes are meant to be seen, and heard. As a rule of thumb, we recommend the top of the chime be hung just above eye level at about six and one half feet on a standard eight foot wall.
Here are two installations close to the the ceiling.
In the first example, a Coronet with a custom walnut cover and nickel-plated bells rests comfortably in a newly constructed home in Connecticut. The homeowner could have built the chime niche anywhere they wanted, yet chose a location near the ceiling.
The Texas installation at right is a Coronet with three brass bells at the former location of a more modest doorbell. This negated the need for the homeowner to move the wires and patch the wallpaper.
As a practical matter, playful children and pets are less likely to play with the tubular bells when they are mounted just out of reach.
A Tale of Two Metros: Custom for an Existing Townhouse and a Standard Finish for a New Custom Home
Here are two ElectraChime Metro doorbells. The top two photos show a Metro executed in rift cut white oak with Minwax Classic Gray Stain beneath three coats of satin urethane for a Philadelphia townhouse. The lower two photos show a Metro in natural walnut installed in a newly constructed home in Colorado Springs. The juxtaposition of the ultra modern Metro with the traditional Spanish arches and plaster is stunning, don't you think?
Let's Talk Turkey about a Unique Doorbell
Right Around the time Sophie Cubbison invented packaged poultry stuffing in the early 1930's, Joseph Klein patented a long chime doorbell with a concealed mechanism that he marketed under the Velvatone name.
With success from popularizing her stuffing, Mrs. Cubbison built a spectacular Spanish Revival home in Los Angeles' Mt. Washington neighborhood.
Mrs. Cubbison helped design the two-story house, dubbed "Casa de Mi Sueño," or "My Dream House." It is considered "much more convincing than most of the 19th-century adobes," according to David Gebhard and Robert Winter's "An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles."
The home features oak doors, custom iron work and stone floors. And it has a unique chime niche that measures an unusually narrow five inches wide and 50 inches tall.
Even after a meticulous restoration, the doorbell niche remained empty until the current owner contacted ElectraChime. With some internet sleuthing, the owner had determined the original chime was likely one of Mr. Klein's Velvatone doorbells as the missing mechanism appeared to have been recessed at the top of the niche. Another clue being that Velvatone had a sales office in Los Angeles.
Alas, Velvatone was an also ran in doorbells. Today, as Mrs Cubbison might have quipped, Velvatone doorbells are about as common as hen's teeth.
With a surviving Velvatone catalog from the ElectraChime collection for reference, we determined the original chime was almost certainly a single bell model. Armed with this information and an original patent drawing, ElectraChime built a highly credible reproduction to do the niche proud.
Once more, the Cubbison house has all the trimmings.
If you are looking for a special custom doorbell for your own home contact us.
Arched Doorbell Niche sports a customized ElectraChime
Photos courtesy of K. Beck
Here's one of my favorite doorbell niche treatments. Painting a light background contrasted with a tasty wall color really frames the doorbell. K. Beck of Portland, Oregon, wanted a doorbell that complimented her taste for her mid-century renovation:
This chime is a customized Ribbon doorbell in Mahogany. If you are interested in your own custom doorbell, please let us know. We're here to help.
