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. 

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).

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.)