We liked the original street numbers we found on many other houses in our neighborhood but were lacking on ours. Talking to our next door neighbors (original owners) we found that not all houses came with the numbers we liked. And, apparently our house was one without. But we wanted them anyway.
We searched
around and could not find a source and finally decided to make our
own. A few visits to houses around our area with an accurate ruler
gave us the size and general shape. Then a few more visits to check
typefaces and we were ready. We made up a set of plans, printed the numbers on to
some paper. The paper was cemented to wood and a coping saw used to
cut out the shapes. Barry Lee
Brisco did a nice write up
about it for the Eichler newsletter and Eichler Network web
site.
The typeface we used (not exactly like the original but giving the same feel) was one we had because Leslie is a graphic designer. We now hear people noting that spending a couple hundred dollars for a typeface does not make sense for such a small project. So, here is an Adobe Acrobat file with the number forms 0 through 9 at the size we used.
Since we made ours there has been a fair amount of demand and a custom street number business is setting up for reproducing Eichler style numbers. They are doing some research and actually creating a new font specifically for this use that should match the original better than ours. For more information see http:// www.customhousenumbers.com/eichler/AB20505.htm.
There is also a person in San Jose that produces the numbers using original materials with molds made from original rubbings. For more information see http://www.eichlernumbers.com/. Had we known about this option we probably would not have made our own.
