This is going to be like that.
So... this was my mailbox a few weeks ago:
[cringe] They say sharing your pain is cathartic. For the record: not feelin' it.
Aaand after a couple of evenings sweating it out in the blistering sauna of our fair state (it was 98 degrees at 6:30PM today. WHY.) I managed to paint, sand, and stain our sad little lizard condo into relative submission:
I dub thee, "almost respectable again."
I know I should plant some flowers or something at the base,
but did I mention it was 98 degrees out tonight? DID I? Plus John
won't let me just stick some fake silk plants out there, so... harrumph. (Be glad I'm not the one in charge of plant life. I'm still lobbying for astro-turf.)
The good news is this was a no-cost makeover, since we already had all the spray paints and stains in the garage. I was able to sand all the rust off the numbers before painting & clear-coating them, and the box has at least six layers of copper paint and clear-coat on it now, so take THAT, sun! [shaking fist at sky]
And now I think I'll use my freshly freshened mailbox to send one of you that resin dragonfly necklace! Eh? (How's THAT for a segue?)
So, the randomly selected winner from my last post is... bmuir322! Congrats, bmuir (Can I call you bmuir?), and please e-mail me your mailing address!
It was 99° at 7:15 this morning.
ReplyDeleteAnd my aunt has artificial grass, and it is beautiful. And pretty realistic! There are downsides, but I'd still do it.
Hee. I have to say that I actually think the 'before' mailbox looked absolutely stunning. Maybe it's just the picture, and it looked worse in real life, but I actually love the burnished shine of it.
ReplyDeleteIt definitely looked worse IRL; there was no shine left to that sucker. I agree the new painted finish is a little boring, though - originally wanted to add black metal straps around the sides to jazz it up, but I didn't have the right metal to do it. :/
DeleteYour before is better than my mailbox. It has been stolen THREE separate times by teenagers and then returned when their moms found them. All funny stories but in the end my mailbox looks a little worse for the wear, and leans badly after being "replanted" and cemented in multiple times.
ReplyDeleteLove it! If it wasn't 12:45 am & drizzly out, I would be outside trying to make our mailbox look like that! Love the copper & the numbers on the side & the whole shebang, even without flowers at the base. Thanks for the inspiration.
ReplyDeleteLOL I thought the 'before' picture was deliberately Steampunked - it has a really Steampunk-y vibe! I like the 'after' picture but honestly I think you could have left the box as it was and just done the post. We don't have mailboxes like this in the UK - post gets put through the front door - I imagine if we did people would just rifle through our post and steal things (My grandfather sent me a birthday card with some money in it that I've still not received yet and I'd hazard a guess I probably won't).
ReplyDeleteHoly Canoli I won something on Epbot! My life is now complete! Address set to you just a moment ago Jen, and I think you can call me whatever you want, though my name is Brianna :)
ReplyDeleteCongrats on winning :)
DeleteCongrats!!
DeleteCongratuluations! (As they say on Cake Wrecks)
DeleteCongratulations Brianna, and we're NOT jealous AT ALL!!! grrr. :) Enjoy your lovely necklace!
DeleteKimstu
YAY! Great job!
DeleteYou're in Florida -- surround it with tiny pink lawn flamingos -- that'll teach John. ;)
ReplyDeleteOh my Gosh! Now I want a mailbox Just so I can surround it with tiny pink lawn flamingos. :)
DeleteAh, Florida weather...I've been here a year and a half and still am not used to it! My mailbox was okay except the address number stickers started blistering off. I bought new stickers to just cover up the old ones (brillant idea, yes) only...they weren't big enough to cover the old ones. I think I see a mailbox makeover in my near future now as well...
ReplyDeleteThe before picture looked perfectly fine to me! But I'm pretty lazy, so... I probably would have just bought new house numbers so they were more visible and called it a day. But the after looks very nice! If you ever quit the website biz, you and John could always go into remodeling (is that what it's called when people hire you to make their house look better? IDK)
ReplyDeleteI too kind-of liked the before and thought, "hey! that looks great and old and weathered! I should make my mailbox look similar!" until I realised that A) I don't get general delivery in my small town (PO Box only) and B) Jen is saying that this is the ugly version...
DeleteYour make-over is very pretty and shiny, and much more sophisticated looking than the before, and I like it just as much but in a completely different way. If I had a mailbox I would probably end up with the dark post like yours but with the box itself weathered (Modern Masters???). Much to my mother's distress I like chipped paint, rusted metal and verdigris a LOT! ;-)
Congrats to bmuir322, I hope you have an outfit to go with that necklace, I would have had to buy a new one!
Because of where the line breaks are on my screen, I read this as "But I'm pretty lazy, so... I probably would have just bought a new house." Haha! :-)
DeleteJohn, you should let Jen stick some (nice) silk plants outside. My Mom does this with silk flowers to fill in the blooming gaps in her garden (meaning she puts them in places without flowers while she's waiting for things to bloom) and people always think they're real!
ReplyDeleteThe mailbox looks lovely. I love how you stained the post without fixing the cracks etc - it looks so beautiful. And some people probably wouldn't have an issue with astroturf especially when you're saving a lot of water !
ReplyDeleteLooks wonderful, but I'm pretty sure the flag has to be red, but that may vary by postmaster.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing we don't have that rule, since it was copper for years & our mail carriers never seemed to care.
DeleteMany places in Canada and the USA only require that the flag be "easily identifiable and clearly visible from a distance".
DeleteOurs is kind of a grey, black. I'm not sure if it was intended to be like that our years of neglect has made that way. Our mail-lady doesn't seem to mind though.
DeleteI'm with John on the fake flowers. Wouldn't they get moldy in your sauna state? Do like the copper, very nice.
ReplyDeleteThey don't get moldy so much as they get bleached white in a few weeks. But hey, for those few weeks... ;)
DeleteGo with white ones and no worries! If you get high-quality (read expensive) ones they can look good, but cheap ones look very tacky. My grandmother likes to use dollar-store varieties in her window boxes and it makes the rest of the family cringe!
DeleteHaving seen the original "before" pic, and knowing you vicariously through your blogs as I do, I almost expected you to steampunk that puppy out :D Get a little gear mechanism to raise & lower the flag, replace the flag with some victorian-looking whirlibird, it's already got the rivets...and sha-POW!!
ReplyDeleteI thought the same thing, lol.
DeleteThat would be stupendous! I'm now envisioning Jen hiding in the bushes and making her steam-powered mailbox tinker.
DeleteIt's like you're IN MY HEAD! Ha! That's *exactly* what I wanted to do, before the heat & humidity drained me of my will to decorate. Maybe I'll add some interlocking gears down the side when it cools off in a few months.
DeleteDarn it - I didn't win!
ReplyDeleteI think the flag should be red, but other than that I think your quick make-over is fabulous.
Couldn't stop staring at the green lawn in your pics -- you don't see much of that around here.
Holy Crapola! :)
ReplyDeleteLooks awesome... If the sun hits that thing just right, you may have quite a few children rendered blind by the light! :)
I have this sudden urge to mail you things...
This is kind of hilarious, Jen. You're adding rust to things INSIDE your house and removing rust from things OUTSIDE your house. *scratches head*
ReplyDeleteWell, the mailbox and post both look great now, but add me to the list of people who thought they were perfectly fine before.
And, as a fellow Floridian, I think it's brilliant that you called the mailbox a "lizard condo" because we all know that's what they're really for. I love your writing.
KW
Yeah, I took a glance at the "before" picture and thought, "Wow, Jen is really working this distressed-rusty look, but it looks TOTALLY authentic and I like it!"
DeleteThen I read on and realized that the rust was what she was trying to get RID of. Heh! I do like the "after" version too, but needs more patina?
Kimstu
How about putting big-ish rocks all around the base? You could use your paint to make them look metallic and then maybe attach some gears and hot air balloons. It's a project you can do inside and then you just have to cart them out there and place them.
ReplyDeleteHaha, I too thought the before picture was fine. I love all the rust and the lovely aged look. Not to say I don't think the after is gorgeous though. I wonder if I could do that to my mailbox... It's just black and boring and I think copper would look lovely. Thank you for the inspiration as always!
ReplyDeleteI kind of like the rust!
ReplyDeleteHas your mailman said "HEY!" yet?
ReplyDeleteJen - I love the mailbox!
ReplyDeleteI see that you're not much of a gardener - I work for a landscaping company and have some suggestions on perennial flowering plants that don't need to be watered very often and can live in the direct sun. (Perennials = plants that come back every year).
Try:
scarlet milkweed
butterfly weed
twinflower
Rain Lilies *
Beach Sunflower *
Amarylis *
Shrimp Plant
Pennyroyal
Stonecrop
The ones with the stars are the ones I think are the prettiest but you might have a different idea of what you want.
Good luck!
Using silk plants outside is brilliant! I get so little sun in my yard that it's next to impossible to grow anything nice. Add that to the fact that its just been raining buckets and it makes floral gardening a nightmare.
ReplyDeleteI thought maybe you'd keep the rusty look and add some gears and sparklies...or maybe paint on some hot air balloons?
ReplyDeleteThis was both hilarious, and inspiring. Now I'm eyeing MY mailbox. I just need to get it past my husband. Ohh, Sweetie!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful, and my vote goes with Sharyn; lawn flamingoes would rock! - Pamela V.
ReplyDeleteI would forgo the plants for the time being, and dump a bag of pretty pebbles or river rock at the base of the post. (It sort of looks like that may have happened a while back anyway?) No watering, no pruning, no dying, no problem.
ReplyDeleteAnd now that your mailbox officially looks nicer than literally ANY element inside of my house, I'm going to go have a nice DIY-shame cry and eat a cookie.
I love it! We did ours this spring eight years after moving in. I didn't think it looked bad before, until I saw it after. Then I was wondering why we didn't do it sooner! I agree with prior commenters that rock would look great. And-no maintenance! You could put downa dark rock, then offset it with some copper glass discs like are used in vases. Then it would be a little sparkly, too. :)
ReplyDeleteDon't plant anything now. Too far into the season. You'll be wasting your time, energy and money. If you wait until fall (not sure what that means in Florida), you can try pansies (annuals) until early spring to plant perennials. The list from Carly M is a great start when you don't want to do a lot of babying and deadheading. Milkweed is fantastic because it feeds the butterflies and provides nurseries for the caterpillars.
ReplyDeleteAs a newspaper carrier, my first thought was...
ReplyDeleteTHANK YOU for painting your house number a nice, bright, CONTRASTING color!
Your delivery persons surely appreciate it.
Overall, it looks very nice. Well done!
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