DIY, does it ring a bell with you?

I grew up in Amsterdam, in an apartment with neighbours on four sides: above, below, left and right. We shared a frontdoor in a porch with the above and below neighbours. We all had our own doorbell next to that frontdoor and we could open that door magically from our apartments above. When opening the frontdoor you came into a narrow hallway leading to stairs. If you went up the stairs, you ended up on a landing where the frontdoor of the apartment below us was. On the other end of the landing there were stairs again, leading to our landing with our own frontdoor and on the other end of our landing there were stairs leading to the apartment above ours. If you went up there, there were stairs on the other end of the landing too. They lead to the attick rooms. Every apartment had an attick room under the eaves. Videophonesystems had not yet been invented, so if someone rang your doorbell, you either had to lean out of the window and yell to the person standing in the porch to take a step back and show themselves to you so you could decide if you'd open the door or not, or you could open the groundfloor frontdoor to let the person(s) in and then open your own frontdoor and yell down the stairs to ask who was there. Or you could go downstairs, see who was there and open the door. Or not. We were not allowed the first option. My parents thought it was very vulgar to scream out of the window. The second option was quite risky, first opening the door and thén waiting who was coming up the stairs....Although you could always close your own frontdoor if it turned out to be a herd of criminals and let the unsuspecting neighbours fend for themselves. The third option was the best one according to my parents, who used to send us children down to see who wanted to be let in. It kept us fit. Although I can't count the times I've tumbled down those stairs and landed at the bottom with again a twisted ankle. I am not the most agile of people. Anyhoo, the family above us opted for the first possibility. My parents held their breaths in disgust, every time 'her from upstairs' screamed 'WHO'S THERE?' out of their window. In the seventies tongue-and-groove cladding was 'the in thing', so my mother decided she wanted a wall in the entrance hall of our apartment cladded with wood. My father went to work. Lots of drilling, screwing, hammering and swearing later, the wall was cladded with the very hip tongue-and-groove wood. At which point we noticed that, with regular intervals, 'her from upstairs' was yelling: 'YES! WHO IS THERE?' from her window. Each time a bit louder and more agitated. My parents sighed and frowned and shook their heads in disapproval. Then someone knocked on the frontdoor of our apartment. My father went to open it. It was 'her from upstairs', quite red in the face and out of breath from all the screaming. 'Does your doorbell keep ringing too? Every 5 minutes our doorbell rings and nobody's there! I guess there are a couple of children playing ding-dong-ditch.' 'Well', my father said, 'not with our bell'. And he closed the door again. So 'she' went upstairs again to continue with the voice-exercises, much to everyone's frustration. Until my father had a brilliant idea. Since the bell-ringing intervals were so regular, could it perhaps be that there was something wrong with the electrics? And could it perhaps be that he had by accident hit a wire while screwing the tongue-and-groove to the wall? So, he grabbed his toolbox again and began unscrewing the tongue-and-groove. And then all went quiet. 'Her from upstairs' could rest her voice. No more 'ding-dong-ditching'. All members of our family had a good chuckle. The next day my father put up the tongue-and-groove again, making sure he didn't hit any wires. And when my mother stumbled upon 'her from above' on the landing later that week, the strange bell-ringing happening was discussed. My mother shook her head in disbelief. 'Can you believe those rotten children?', she said. 'Ding-dong-ditching all afternoon! We were just lucky they did not do it to us.'