Addressing the Mailbox

Sometimes I just get a bee in my bonnet.  I have looked for attractive replacements for our mailbox ever since we moved to Granite Falls almost two years ago.

The crew, loitering.

I have come to two main conclusions in that time.  One- mailboxes are expensive.  Too expensive to spring for when your existing mailbox is perfectly functional.  And Two- even if we had a pretty mailbox on a tidy post, it wouldn't be helped by the rusty mossy messes next to it.  Lipstick on a pig.  Even so, I was pretty tired of dragging my finger through this nastiness every time I needed to put the flag up.

Swamp thing.

And all of a sudden, I couldn't live with it looking like that anymore.  So I did what any sane person would do.

Nailed it.

I got a hammer and pulled that sucker off the post.  And gave it a bath in the kitchen sink.

Doesn't everyone bathe their mailbox?

Like I said, perfectly sane.  But hey, at least it looked better!

Post-micro-derm.

Then I decided, hey, why not try to clean the neighbors' mailboxes up a little?  So I went out to the road with a soapy rag and tried to wash some of the green gunk off our neighbors' mailboxes too (with mixed results, but at least I tried).  And I didn't stop there.  Just take a look at the craziness that ensues.

As long as we're in the kitchen, right?

Easiest ever.

But why would anyone wrap their mailbox flag with Press N Seal?  If you guessed "to spray paint the mailbox oil-rubbed bronze," give yourself a point!  I didn't even bother to sand it because I figured if the paint flaked off, it couldn't look worse than it already did out on the post, and there was no reason why I couldn't just sand it down and re-paint the dang thing.

Ready to roll.

I realize that I sound a little off my rocker (and I'm not going to argue the point), but here's where you see there's a method to my madness.

Sooooo much better!

Nice, right?  It doesn't look brand new, and in fact the nice paint job really makes the flag look faded, but it looks so much better than the moss-covered version that we had before.  And all for the very reasonable price of free-ninety-nine.  So I waited as long as my patience would allow (about an hour) and then decided to just risk messing up the paint so I could get it back on the post before the sun went down.  Lucky for me, a group of guys in my neighborhood were shooting the breeze in the middle of the road, so I had plenty of helpful supervision, if you definition of helpful supervision is rolling your eyes and chuckling at the girl taking pictures of her mailbox.

Thar she blows!

The last step was numbers.  I ordered some vinyl from an etsy shop called It's a Sticky Situation.  Two days later the vinyl arrived and we knew the guy from the local pizza place would never be confused about which house was ours again.

That's the one where the people who like pizza live.

Because I didn't bother to sand or prime the box, the adhesive from the vinyl did a little damage to the paint, but it's not terribly noticeable.  Not enough to bother repainting at least!

Lens flare- how very JJ Abrams of me.

It's a small thing, but I feel so much better for having done it.  

Much improved.

Sometimes a little bee in your bonnet isn't a bad thing, eh?