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You are here: Home / Architects / Friday Architectural Product Review

Friday Architectural Product Review

March 12, 2010 by 2 Comments

It’s the little details that make a good house a great one. A product that we frequently use that helps set the design tone from the street is address letters. If you have ever gone out shopping for them, you can attest to just how hard it is to anything special.

In the picture below, you can see we pin-mounted the number 6 beside the front door. You can buy a similar style letter at Design within Reach for $48 each – and they are great quality. But as soon as you add another 3 or 4 numbers/ letters, that adds up really quick. Four letters, with shipping and handling from DWR, will set you back a grand total of $176.64. Ouch! Really? But it’s worth it…. right? It sets the tone that tells people you care, that you have great taste and style, and that you’re good on a first date, and that you like animals. But what if you don’t like the Neutra letters, or it’s an inappropriate style for your house? Are  you forced to go to (gasp!) Pottery Barn?

clean and simple

There is an online retailer that sell letters like the one I’m showing above, and plenty others, for a fraction of that cost while giving you a level of options that is fantastic. I order from signlettersource.com all the time and they have always delivered. As an example, because I am about to order these babies for my own house so I clipped out the internet page showing you how many options you have and how simple it is to go through this process for yourself.

The process is ordered into a series of steps to walk you through the process:

Step 1: Enter in your letters or numbers

Step 2: How tall do you want your letters to be? 4″ is typical but you have the choice of going as small as 2″ or as large as 17″

Step 3: How thick do you want the letters to be? 1/8″ is the smallest but you can increase the thickness in 1/8″ increments up to 1″. In the picture above, we went with 3/4″

Step 4: Choose your finish. You can select brass, bronze, stainless steel or aluminum with a choice of 14 material finishes and 54 baked enamel color finishes (WOW!)

Step 5: Choose the font style you want. The style we used above was Ribbon but there are 94 font styles to choose from – you can even get those fonts in script (cursive) but you have to contact the company directly for pricing.

Step 6: Choose how you would like to mount your new awesome letters. You can attach them directly to the wall, or post – whatever, or you can have them pin mounted so that they stand off the surface of whatever it is that you are attaching them to. You would select ‘Welded Stud Mount’ for the pin mounting option.

If you go pin mounted, as part of step 6 you will need to select the stud length. This is asking you to tell them how long the welded studs need to penetrate whatever it is that are attaching to. Unless it’s masonry (brick, CMU, etc), you want to select a length (depth) that will get you to the stud – if you don’t know, call the company and they can tell you know what ;ength you need. Next you will need to add a spacer dimension – this is asking how far off the wall do you want your letters to stand. We typically go with a 1/”2 standoff – just enough to get a slight shadow line.

In the example order form I have inserted here, my total was $148.00 – so yea, okay math majors, I know the math –  that’s only $28 less than DWR … but … it is still less and I have loads of options buddy. I could have dropped the material thinckness down to 1/2″ if I wanted too – but I didn’t and yet I’m still ahead. If you do decide to try these letters out, take a picture and email it to me – bob@lifeofanarchitect.com, Id like to see it.

Here’s the link that will get you straight to the order form (here)

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Filed Under: Architects, Materials and Products Tagged With: address letters, metal, pin mounted

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