We've Got Mail!

One of the items on The List is to replace our current mailbox. As I stated, there was no mailbox when we moved in. Before we bought the house, we were in love with a pretty 100-year old Craftsman in a seedier section of town. The mailbox on this house was wall-mount, and pretty shabby, so in my delirious enthusiasm for the pretty 100-year old Craftsman, I bought a replacement wall-mount mailbox. Now, prior to this, I had never bought a mailbox, and I had NO idea they were so freaking expensive. So I thought this solid brass number was a steal, and that once it had tarnished, it'd look smashing on the pretty 100-year old Craftsman.

Flash forward a few weeks, and we'd abandoned the pretty 100-year old Craftsman in favour of our less than 10-years old haunted style-defying house. But we still had the brass mailbox, and it was too late to return it. So we put up the garish mailbox, and I hoped that it would quickly tarnish and stop being so garrrsh darned BRIGHT. I was wrong, and nearly a year later, it's still a beacon of BRIGHT BRASS at the end of our drive way. I fear the neighbours think we're equally garish and that the house is decorated with gold lame' curtains, turquoise painted walls, and oooooooodles of white furniture (not that there anything wrong with that, if, you know, you're into that sort of thing). As my mom pointed out, most people WANT to keep their brass from tarnishing, but I'm not one of those people, and I'm too lazy/unmotivated research how to remove the protective coating on the brass.

Yesterday, I was browsing a post on a blog about Craftsman-style outdoor decor, and I saw this sconce and had an epiphany! With all my new-found wood working skills acquired through a semester of wood working offered through the local community college, I could build my own mailbox! And so I set about drawing a mock-up of what the finished product will look like. It should be obvious/noted that the design is not the scale and not set in stone.
The front of the box will have our street address, and the right and left sides will have some sort of design—I’m thinking ginkgo leaves because I’ve always really like their shape, and they’re a relatively neutral motif common to the Arts & Craft movement without really screaming “WILLIAMMORRISOMG!!!!” and potentially clash with the style-defying house. I’ll use some sort of weather proof wood (cedar, perhaps) for the frame, top, and the numbers and design. To more fully emulate the sconce design, I’ll use acrylic or Plexiglas panels behind the cut numbers/design. The top of the box will be hinged, so the mail carrier can easily drop off mail, and we can easily retrieve it. Maybe I’ll incorporate some sort of security measure (a locked box with just a mail slot?). And, if I decide to get REALLY industrious, I could attach a small solar panel to the top of the box, and insert some LED lighting so at night, the box will GLOW (ooooooooh). We shall see.

I’m excited about this, so I’ll hopefully get off my butt and get some plans drawn up. Stay tuned!