Mail Time

While we had the fam down here helping out with some wooden door countertop renovations I figured I would add a couple of small projects to their lists so they could take a break from worrying about putting my kitchen back together. In all the excitement of trying to sneak in another project without anyone noticing I forgot to snap a before picture but you can kind of barely see in the picture below our previous arrangement. The light was a weird modern curved glass with etched lines over a black rectangle, the house numbers were faded black cursive that were hung diagonally, the mailbox had been painted black and was really goopey looking and finally the doorbell was black with a white center. We didn't really want to spend a lot of money sprucing up this part of the house since the arrangement isn't something we want to have permanently so we used left over oil rubbed bronze spray paint to do most of the work for us and we found a our new light at Lowe's for under $25 - including electrical tape and a new light bulb (we were able to use a 10% coupon we got in the mail from our MyLowe's card, Lowe's free rewards program).

So to begin we took everything down and gave the siding a much needed bath. Some of the dirt and grime we weren't able to get off, but unless you're here inspecting it then you can't really tell (and if you are here inspecting our 65 year-old house's outside cleanliness then you need to leave). So then we started with the easiest part - the doorbell. We taped off the surrounding area with painters tape, but then realized we might still get some spray overage. 

So we added some printer paper to cover a bigger area from my ORB spray and it worked great. 

Here's the area after we sprayed see how the ORB didn't even reach the edges of the printer paper - we are so innovative. 

Here is a closer shot of the doorbell all one color now and we think it looks great. 

Then we got to working on the mailbox. We used left over paint stripper that we used on our wooden doors. Both the lid and the base of the mailbox needed multiple coats and we found that these things had been painted multiple times (black, then blue, then white, then nautical red and white stripe) so needless to say there were years of coverage that needed to go. 

We also realized that what currently looked like to be a flat surface metal mailbox was actually a nice textured metal (it had just been painted so many times that the paint gooped up and filled in the texture). So with enough paint stripper we were able to get most of the colors off and most of the texture raised again. 

Then we brought out the left over ORB and gave both parts of the mailbox a good coat. 

Then we found some leftover paint in our garage that's this nice muted teal color (we still can't figure out what they used this color on though, we thought it was for our front door but our door is more grey then this color so who knows, thanks though!). The base of the mailbox has this nice detail in the center that gets lost when it's all one dark color so I wanted to bring in some color to highlight this area.

I took a Q-tip and dipped it in the can of teal paint and dabbed it over the area I wanted to accentuate. Then I took a rag and dabbed most of the access paint off. I wanted it to have an almost patina look so I didn't want this paint layer to be heavy. This photo also shows a nice view of the new texture we found.

And here it is all hung up and fancy looking. I love that we were able to bring out the old texture and of course of love the shade of kind-of-black-kind-of-broze the ORB gives it.

Here is a shot of our new light and numbers. We took the numbers down and also gave them a coat of ORB and rehung them straight. The light is kind of industrial looking and is rustic bronze metal so it fits in nicely with the mailbox. 

Here is an evening shot with all four areas redone and spruced up. We love the glow of our new light and the way it hangs down instead of resting against the house. We like that the numbers are straight now because it helps to keep everything uniform (no OCD in this house...). We are just dealing with the fact that the doorbell is positioned way too far left and falls in a weird spot beneath our giant mailbox.

We have debated for a future project of taking the mailbox off and taking out a brick to the right of the door and having a mail slot put in instead (the mail would then fall into our hall closet). We've also looked at new address displays at Lowe's, we really like the ones that are a plaque with the numbers and street name spelled out. But all of that will be down the road. I really appreciate the fact that we were able to change this area so much for under $25 by using materials we had on hand. Below you can see the brick wall where we would put the new slot. Check out those succulents on the steps, nice huh?

Here is a shot of our porch with another small addition. Nana and pops redid a four top patio table that we now have on our back porch so we moved our small two top to the front porch. I think it looks really cute and it gives us a better excuse to sit out here and spy on the neighbors drink coffee or wine.

This area could use some more potted plants and maybe something on the blank wall behind the left chair, but it'll get there. We are really starting to feel like we live here now and are trying to just take things a day at a time instead of worrying about 'the list'. I kind of keep forgetting there's a wedding in 98 days that still needs my DIY attention and our wallet's attention.