I'm so happy to report that we've finally come to a decision in the great house numbers debate of 2011. As you may recall, Alex and I have been on the fence when it comes to what we wanted to do with the transom window over our front door. And with all the work we've been doing this last year to reconfigure and renovate our vestibule, the time has come for us to pull the trigger.

The options we debated between were:

1. Numbers on a plate or plaque directly on the house.
2. Numbers on the door.
3. Numbers in the transom.
4. 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).

After many thoughtful, insightful, and helpful comments from all of our readers, and after much deliberation the winner is...(drum roll please)...

3. Numbers in the transom with original glass!

It was a tough decision, and not one made lightly, largely due to the fact that we had purchased a leaded glass window for the space nearly nine years ago. Not only do I love the leaded glass, but I consider it an investment of both money and time. Time you might wonder? Well, the leaded glass, like many other things in our house, has been moved from one precarious location to another in our basement hellhole, and I consider it no small feat that it's survived the last nine years. I'm sure it will keep moving over the next several years and will ultimately be broken only when we finally figure out a place where we want to install it.  

But alas, I finally caved to Alex's pressure to pursue the numbers in the transom option, in part because I think it will look really classic, in part because I dreaded the thought of trying to keep the leaded glass clean, in part because most of our readers suggested this route, and in part because I didn't particularly love any of the other house number options. Lots of parts went into this decision, that's for sure.

We had a couple of options on how to proceed with these numbers. The classic approach was to apply gold leaf and hand paint the numbers and their black shadow/outline on the window ourselves. You might be able to guess, but Alex was pushing for this option. Though I have no doubt we could tackle this, there are just too many other projects going on right now, so I had to veto his gumption as I had found a nearly as authentic option that was far easier to implement.

We opted to work with a Washington, DC-based company called The House Number Lab. They offer a large assortment of number styles as well as materials to choose from, each in historically accurate and completely custom fonts and sizes that are tailored to our specific install. After careful consideration, and some internal debate, we settled on a 22 carat matte gold in "The Grant B" style font with a heavy drop shadow to the left in black. We think it's a classic font that will work well with the style of our home, but we went with the "B" option which introduces a small extra flourish on the numbers for a little extra oomph. Who knew there would be so many options?