Thursday, October 13, 2011
As you may be aware, we've been hard at work on our vestibule update for some time now. Stripping, salvaging, sanding, plastering, trimming, caulking, painting, glazing, restoring, and everything else-ing. We've put tons of time into all of the little details to make sure the project looks great, is historically appropriate, and remains functional and effective. We've reached a point in our front vestibule renovation project we are looking at other houses around Old Town for the best way to proceed.
Wendy and I have long debated the best approach for displaying our house numbers. In our old configuration, the house numbers were small brass numbers nailed to the front door. With our new configuration, we want to make the numbers easier to see, more effective, and more appealing than the old manner of display.
As we see it, we have four primary options for house number location and display.
- Numbers on a plate or plaque directly on the house.
- Numbers on the door.
- Numbers in the transom.
- Other (like painted on the sidewalk, graffiti on the stairs, or some other random display that may work in theory but would never work in reality).
There are so many different ways of displaying house numbers on row houses like ours, and we see them all over Old Town. So to get our inspirational juices flowing, we took a little walk and snapped a few photos of some of the options we tend to see.
The first option of a number or plate directly on the house is one of the most prevalent. The numbers can be all in one plaque, affixed individually, mix and match, or any combination of approach. Here's an example of a house using this method that has a similar door/vestibule setup as we do.
The second option of numbers placed on the door is quite effective, but really only works well if you have a solid front door. Since our doors are French doors, this approach to house numbers doesn't really work for us unless we put the numbers down very low or up very high. (Notice, it looks like someone put the '8' on upside down in the photo. Such a subtle mistake.)
The third option of numbers in the transom is what I believe to be the most historically accurate approach to a nicely displayed address. You see this option in multiple places and varieties. There are so many options in this setup that it makes it hard to choose. You see numbers only in various fonts.
So many options and styles, it is really tough to say.
Oh, and the final approach of random stuff. How about spelling out your numbers while also displaying them on the side of the door. Yeah, not sure who decided that would be a good idea. No offense, but I just don't like it.
As I said, we are leaning the way of the transom numbers. We've been in touch with a company who offers authentic and historically accurate numbers, so this may be a bit of a no brainer. We'll keep you all posted, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject. What do you think? Here's one more that really shows a similar setup to our door.
(Sorry for the quality of some of the photos. I took them while I was out walking Lulu early this morning and we got stuck in a thunderstorm and downpour with a very dark sky.)
Interested in what we went with? See what we chose and our installation process here.
