New Look for a Mailbox

Nothing stops the mail  from being delivered. Since our mail lady is out there in all types of weather, I thought it was time to give  her  a pleasant mailbox experience when coming up to our house.  In the neighborhood where I live, the mail lady goes door to door by foot to deliver the mail.  When we first moved in, we thought we had a horrible mailbox and set up.  The previous owner told us he located it in its current spot so we can easily back out of our driveway. 

We have a very narrow driveway and a hill right off the side away from the house.  The mailbox height helps guide us out of the driveway.  When we are backing up, we can see it, and as long as we don’t hit it, we are still in the drive.  Did that make sense????  It didn’t bother me too much until I recently improved our curb appeal by painting our front steps and adding a faux runner (here).  After that, the mailbox situation wasn’t fitting in.

 

 

Here is our ugly mailbox.  One day when our regular delivery lady wasn’t here, another postman was dropping off the mail, and I happened to be outside. He said our set up looked like a guillotine  for someone’s head.  Once he said that, I told him I agreed.  Oh boy, I really had to do something about it.  Even though  the structure was not my favorite, it had to stay that way till we figured out another system and way to help us out of the narrow drive.

 

This is the old rusted mailbox which was really small.  If we were not home to get the mail and if it was raining, it became wet because most of the magazines stuck out. I decided my first step was to stain the wood to give it a new look.   I selected a black stain to blend in with our shutters and newly-painted stair runner.

 

However,  I also decided to  paint the box  red just to see what it would look like. It looked cute, but paint didn’t solve the fact that it was still too small.

 

 

 

While I was at Home Depot to pick up something else, I wandered down the aisle that contains the mailboxes.  Voila!  I saw a cute box that was tall enough to hold all of our mail.  Plus, we would no longer have to be concerned about the mail getting wet when it rains (which we get a lot of in Syracuse).

 

This is not the final solution to our mailbox drama, but it will do for now.  Mom suggested that I paint it red and stencil the word “Post” on it so it would have an English vibe.  Right now, though, we want to stay with the white.  It looks so fresh.

 

 

I hope our mail lady likes the new box because we and our neighbors sure do.

 

Cheers!