House Numbers (Part 1)

Alright, I'll start off by showing my restored house numbers, and part 2 will be just a photo montage of other old house numbers in town.

After I finished cleaning up the plaque and removing paint smears, dirt, and even some previous repairs (someone had repainted the chipped portions in black), I was left with this:



You can clearly see the "blue over white" enamel around the edges, as well as the corrosion.

I'm a bit hesitant to give away all my trade secrets, but in the next step, I went over the metal with a clear product to seal it (yes I'm being vague on purpose). After this, I started colour matching the blue.

The problem with the blue is that it's NOT BLUE. It's indigo. It you look at it under good lighting, it's rather purple.

I wanted to use enamel (oil) paints for the touch-ups, since they are more durable, but FINDING THEM was insanely difficult. I had a few on hand, but some of the colours I needed (dark blue) was all dried out. I went to about 5 different stores and I couldn't find them. Michael's (art supplies) was my absolute last stop (and the farthest away), and I found exactly what I wanted.

My colour match was a mix of blue and red, but it turned out a bit darker than what I wanted. It's still very close, but it could have been better if I had spent more time on it. After the paint dried, I went over the entire thing (front and back) with a clear coat designed for car paint (since it won't yellow).



This was the finished product. Not perfect, but WAAAAAY better than before. I also painted the heads on 2 brass screws to mount it.



Unfortunately, the rest of the porch still looks rather ghetto at the moment, but here's how it looks. You'll notice that I mounted the numbers centered ABOVE the door, rather than poorly tacked ONTO the door mouldings.





This photo set shows the full transformation:

349

I've been dragging my feet when it comes to the house. I had today off (Friday) and I wasted much of it in front of the computer.

I did force myself to do a TEENSY bit of work, namely a bit more drywall patching, and installing ONE piece of trim for the office built-in (the sill piece).

But, I got inspired (quite randomly) to yank-off my house number plaque and start fixing it.

I'm not sure if this is the case in your particular home town, but I've noticed that a lot of older homes in town have these wonderful old blue and white house numbers. My house was no exception. I was THRILLED that my house still had the original number.

I'll go into more detail about these later this week (maybe tomorrow).

But here is my number 349.



As you can see, it's in pretty rough shape. It was nailed in place (rather than held with screws as I'd have thought it should be). I was surprised to find that these are actually enameled numbers. I had always thought that they were just painted tin. They are actually a fairly thick steel plate, enameled in black on the back. The front is coated first with white, and then the blue is added, leaving the white background showing the numbers (this is very obvious when looking at it from an angle, and if you notice where it's chipped (not really visible in these 3 photos).



You can see all kinds of grime, as well as careless brush marks from a painter. The portion above is rusted right through the plate. I plan to fix this.



I've already cleaned it up, removed all the grime, dirt, etc, and begun repairing it. BUT, I'm not showing any additional photos until it's ready for the reveal. I'll need to wait 24 hours before I can paint it, so realistically it won't be ready until Sunday.

Stay tuned!