Unifi Doorbell: Round 2
It hasn’t quite been two years - but it’s close enough that timeago.js, which I use to make the timestamps on my blog prettier, reckons it has been - since we bought a Unifi doorbell, after which I pulled the old intercom out of the wall, cut a tiny rectangle hole in a scrap piece of varnished shelving timber, screwed it to the wall and went “yep, that works until I get the time to do it properly”.
You know how shit goes, it took forever for me to find time to do it properly. It looked like arse the entire time. I am, in retrospect, gutted I did not take any before photos, so I have neither photos of the “1990s finest technology intercom” nor the scrap piece of timber, but needless to say they both looked awful.
I found the brick mortar I’d bought for the process in the process of cleaning the garage out last week, so I decided that this weekend was the one, it was happening. So yesterday, after our usual choring, I went and bought some masonry bits and the anchors, pulled everything off the wall, drilled a couple of holes, absolutely ratfucked the masonry bit that was the correct size, momentarily considered trying a larger sized bit, re-terminated the RJ45 for the doorbell, and stuck it somewhat haphazardly in the new location and called it a day.
There were two striking problems with how I’d left it. First, the fucking great hole where the original intercom system was. Second, the Unifi angled mount requires a small recess where the cable goes in - the mount itself is not fat enough to sit flush against the wall, leaving me with a 4mm gap on the left side of it. Infuriating. The third, slightly less obvious issue, was that one of the anchor holes was only about 10mm deep, not really enough to get a good grip.
Still, I figured I could solve this, so before sitting down to play some video games for the night, I dropped one of the spare bricks from when they built our house which the previous owners very thoughtfully left behind the back shed for us into a bucket of water (as I’m told it would help the mortar cure better by stopping one of the bricks from wicking all the water away if it was waterlogged?).
Up this morning to walk the dog, and then immediately into it. I went to HammerBarn, bought two more decent 5mm masonry bits, mixed up some mortar and did my very best to brick it in nicely. I then took the masonry bits, drilled the holes the rest of the way so the anchors were secure, then used the drill bits to pre-drill some sections where I needed to recess it, and spent almost two hours with a hammer and chisel chipping away at the brick until it fit.
It was an absolute arseload of work, but the results look pretty good. You can definitely pick out where the brick was replaced (at least, I can), but only if you’re looking for it. If you just walk up, it does not draw your eye to it at all, so I’m pretty happy.
The best part? I can finally pull the plastic film off the front of the camera that I had left on because I knew it was not finished!
