I was having issues with delivery drivers not being able to quickly identify my house number. My neighbors are great at bringing over my miss delivered packages, but I wanted to fix this issue. After receiving my Nomad 3 and making a tool tray, I thought I’d figure out a fix for my house number on the street curb. Now keep in mind you can pay someone $20-40 bucks to paint your curb, but as a font geek, I wanted to use a font I liked AND learn how to use my Nomad 3 some more.
I used Inkscape vector graphics app (Free as in Freedom for Macs, Linux, and Windows) to find a font, then size each number to 2.5" wide and 4" tall, with 1" between each number. I had to search up some tutorials on how to edit the number line art so I could add a support brace to the inner circle of the “9” in my house number. I’d love to pass on the multiple steps involved, but unfortunately too much beer has passed through my brain cells since I did this a few months ago and I just don’t remember. But it is absolutely possible in Inkscape to do this for numbers 0, 6, 8, and 9 (and maybe 4 depending on the font used).
Once the numbers looked good in Inkscape, I exported to an SVG file, then imported into Carbide Create. Since the numbers are so large, I could not fit all 4 digits of my house number in the working area of the Nomad. Instead, I milled 2 digits on one board, then the other 2 digits on a second board. I milled on some super cheap 1/4" particle board that I cut into 8"x8" squares. Then I just applied tape between the two boards to prevent paint bleed from the crack.
Here are some photos that should help show what I’ve been describing:
The number templates came out perfectly. I’m just a terrible painter which is why there is some spray bleed of the black paint.
I’ve made extra templates for my neighbors and friends, so we now have less misdirected deliveries on my street now.
People are overly critical of their work. Believe me no one will ever knock on your door and say “You know you got overspray on your numbers”. When I was working I had to find addresses all the time. You would not believe how many houses and buildings do not have addresses posted on them. If you ever need 911 you will be glad you put the number on the curb. At night even with an address on your house it is hard to see in the dark.
As an excessive compulsive micro perfectionist I can identify with your comment about over spray. However, as a guy living in a rural area with neighbors who have no, hidden, or small numbers on their houses, I agree with the other reviewers. ANY number that is visible is better than any number missing, too small, or hidden. The delivery guys in my neighborhood know me and ask me where my neighbors are by name and / or address.
This is one of THREE numbers on my house. It is well lit at night and is about 13" in diameter. (My wife loves it - BIG Harry Potter fan.)
@Gerry - You’re right, I did have to cut the bottom of the stencil in the photo. On the latter ones I made, I changed the cut positions in Carbide Create so they were lower. Wondering if you’re local to my neighborhood or if I failed to strip the GPS metadata from my photos…
@RTWD Absolutely love what you did for your house number sign, simply outstanding!
Heh… neither - I’m in the UK. It’s a combination of how the US street numbering system increases uniqueness, you having your region in your profile, and how a large company near to you has product with an ‘auto-complete’ feature that shows pictures… and perhaps 10 seconds of effort. What a world we live in, eh? I apologise if it seems odd. I was curious as to why your house might be hard for a driver to locate and the road’s topology and those black metal objects on top of the pole makes it pretty clear why. I write (amongst other things) vehicle routing software so my interest in this issue was semi-professional.
I can still remember when street address information and map routing first appeared on the Internet — I was pulling an all-nighter and a truck driver showed up at our loading ramp, very, very lost — looked up the address for him and printed out a set of directions which sent him on his way.
There was a very narrow window where it was potentially the stuff of horror movies, and to a degree, it’s coming back, esp. w/ persistent geo-tagging of photos (folks should be stripping that out before uploading — not sure if our software does or no).
Thanks Gerry for the additional info. Your google foo > me, but I don’t doubt for a second that with the right parameters in a search would yield helpful info. All this data is of public record, what’s changed is that it is much easier for anyone to retrieve it. I did verify though that I had stripped out the GPS info in my photos. Will is right and I try to make that a habit before posting photos online.
On my smartphone one of the Settings options is to not save location data in the metafile and that is set.
AARP and other entities recommend that GPS / location data not be saved on files as a default. Most phone stores will set it for you in seconds for the asking.
On most digital camera, not GPS capable so that is not an issue.
When I open a file in Photoshop and save it for Web Use the default is to strip all information from the file.
Still, if you know my name, all you have to do is walk into my county tax assessor’s office and get all sorts of information. Or plug my semi-unique street address, without a city into Google and get all sorts of information.
As an additional measure, if you save a Windows computer screen print - PrtScn - or Alt-PrtScn on the keyboard, no location metadata is saved. The Snipping Tool does not save location metadata either.
Thanks,
Rex
Your google foo > me, but I don’t doubt for a second that with the right parameters in a search would yield helpful info. All this data is of public record, what’s changed is that it is much easier for anyone to retrieve it. I did verify though that I had stripped out the GPS info in my photos. Will is right and I try to make that a habit before posting photos online.