In Our House: We’ve Got Mail!

Remember this post about our mailbox hunting woes? We did end up purchasing a mailbox (about a month ago) and it’s been sitting in our house for quite awhile. We went with a plain black over-sized metal mailbox because we wanted something affordable ($20 at Home Depot!) and big enough to hold packages like textbooks and small trinkets. Also, by purchasing the metal kind, we have a much better chance of no leaks than the plastic (which gets tiny cracks after constant exposure to the sun).

So why haven’t we done anything with it for an entire month? Why have we continued to drive to the post office just to drop off our Netflix movies? Well, I insisted that I needed to personalize this mailbox while I was able to hold it in my lap and while I didn’t have to clean the road grime to get to the surface. Thus was born my plan – I’d trace the letters in pencil and then erase any pencil lines after painting.

Great idea? Sure. Did it work? Not really. When it came time to cut out all the letters, it took 5 minutes for one letter and was painstaking work. I ended up using that one piece to set a guideline for all my other letters and just freehanded the rest, looking at what I had printed as a guideline.

This is a really rough picture of the sketches. I fixed the o placement in “Howards” after looking at the picture.

Next, I got some gold craft paint and a really tiny brush and went to work. I worried more about making sure everything looked straight and even instead of staying with the exact lines I drew. Then I erased and visible marks and wiped the eraser marks off (gently – make sure not to scrub!). Finally, I broke out a can of clear acrylic spray paint that I had leftover from the wedding, strapped on a fume mask, and sealed everything in. Trust me, there is no chance of this baby chipping, at least in the next year or so, and I’ll watch to see if it needs another coat here and there to help it stay nice for a long time.

Looks pretty good for a $20 project, huh?