House sign letters help

[TheCuterHooter]

Hi, I'm a Chi Omega from the Omicron Kappa chapter at UCDavis and I'm brand new to this site, actually, I've been reading through a lot of the posts prior.....

I'm incharge of picking the new letter signs for our house and I was wondering a few questions 1) Does anyone know where their house ordered the sign letters they have 2) How many inches are your letters 3) What kind of material is best for it, ie stainless steal, brass, etc... 4) Do you all think it would look alright to get letters in a dark red color instead of a brass or copper color, or would that look tacky?

Any help would make me extremely happy.


*muah*

[Optimist Prime]

Wood letters. Plyboard double cut and then put together to give two tone effect.

[Rio_Kohitsuji]

Question, what will the background of the letters be? Brick, stone, etc?
The XO house closest to me is white w/black letters, but hell, their house is so gorgeous anyway..heh

[Tom Earp]

I never was one for large letters on a house. I call it "TACKY"!

Letters understated would apeal to me!

What I have always envisioned is A Copy of The Badge Hanging from the House which would be lighted. Smaller letters maybe on a Brass Plaque beside or above the door.

If I am proud enough to wear My Badge, why not Have The House Wear The Badge? That is where we as Greeks Live.

Just my small take!

[AchtungBaby80]

Originally posted by Tom Earp
What I have always envisioned is A Copy of The Badge Hanging from the House which would be lighted. Smaller letters maybe on a Brass Plaque beside or above the door.

Yep, Tom, I agree...my chapter's house had a large version of our badge over the front door, with light bulbs in the "pearls" so that at night it looked really gorgeous all lit up! Instead of having huge letters stuck on our house, we just had Delta Zeta spelled out in smaller letters on the side facing the street. The only ones on campus that had large letters on them were fraternity houses.

[GeekyPenguin]

We have huge (2'+) white letters going down our brick chimney (the rest of our house is blue). I actually think they are quite ugly, but if we take them down, we can't put anything else back up - the town now has Greek zoning, and we're grandfathered in to our area because we've been in the house 80+ years. We also have a crest in the front lawn, which is kind of tradition on our campus, but somebody keeps breaking it. We know who they are but can't really prove it - crappy.

[ZZ-kai-]

I am unsure of your budget, but the nicest letters I have seen on any house, were on the houses at the University of Nebraska. Most of the houses have their letters (about a foot in height), which are raised off the house about an inch or two. The letters are metal and permanently attached to the house. But, behind the letters are neon lighting, so at night, the letters have a color outline and during the day, they are just normal letters.

I wish I had a picture to show you...

Here is one of the ATO house, not illuminated. However, if you imagine it being dark, and the lights would be hidden directly behind the ATO letters, so they light up at night...it really is awesome (all the houses have a color associated with them. I.E., the Beta color behind their letters are red):

[AOII_LB93]

Man, that ATO house looks like a compound not a house!

[TriDeltaGal]

As a fellow UCer from UCLA (woo woo! I'm so glad you are here), most sorority houses have 1 to 2 feet high metal script lettering on their houses i.e. Delta Delta Delta or Chi Omega . I can only think of one house that only has their greek letters on them, whereas many all have both their greek letters and full names in script. I think it looks really nice.

If you check out the UCLA panhellenic site, it has pictures of all the houses so you can check it out yourself.

[Little E]

We have um...2 or 3 foot letters on our house. http://www.beloit.edu/~ast it looks ok. all our houses are labeled and for a very non-greek campus it helps everyone notice our house as our house.

edit- they are metal, we had wood ones on the old house but they got stolen , go for permenance.

[TheCuterHooter]

Thanks everyone, all your suggestions were truly very helpful. Here's a link to a picture of our house, as you can see it's sort of a tiny house, so I was hoping to do something with the letters to add that something extra to our house.
I was playing around with the idea of having dark red letters and then have Chi Omega spelt out under then in a gold color...I do like the idea of having maybe the badge instead and about the colored lights behind the letters, I'm mixed between those three, just one question about the letters w/ lights, do the letters end up looking too much like one of those neon signs you see on bars, or is it more subtle?

Thanks again to everyone who helped. I'm really loving how wonderful the people on greekchat are.

*muah*

[TheCuterHooter]

oops, forgot the link, here it ishttp://chiomega.com/chapters/content...OTSGLWIRXQ.jpg

[ZZ-kai-]

I think your letters would look great with the neon behind it. No, they do not look like beer signs or anything like that. It is nice, because the neon is actually right behind the letters, so you don't actually see the neon bars - it just glows behind the letters - so it looks like the letters have a three or four inch neon glow around them.

[OnePlus69Is70]

I dunno if you'd be into it, but we made our letters ourselves- I don't like ordering them, it just doesn't have the same feel. Ours are double-thick, pressire-sealed wood, cut with a skill saw, painted blue. I've got to dig around and find a pic.