House Project: Make Your Own Mailbox Post

Yes we made this ourselves from scratch and yes I do feel like a rock star! This is the first project we've completed in Mission Cutesie Up Bland House and I think it looks great. It's pretty pathetic that we've lived in this house for a month now without a mailbox and I thought our delivery gal just might go postal on us, but I didn't want to put out something that was chintzy looking and plastic. I wanted fairly simple but cuter than just a mailbox on a stick and something to go with my vision of turning our cookie cutter into something a little more Italian cottage. Unfortunately everything I saw that I liked was online and expensive so we decided to do it ourselves.

What did we use to make our lovely mailbox? We got all our stuff at Lowes.

• The post is actually a banister that you would use on an indoor staircase. We painted it with several coats of black Rostoleum Professional High Performance Enamel spray paint. It took us one can for the whole project. Don't forget the bottom of the banister, it won't be seen but it'll help protect it.
  

• We bought a standard metal mailbox and a piece of wood from the same aisle that is precut to fit under your mailbox and attach to a post, or in our case, brackets. We painted the board with the same paint.

The decorative bracket is actually a plant hanger we found in the garden department. We looked at shelf brackets that would've worked just fine, they just weren't the style we were after.

The decorative bracket isn't actually supporting the mailbox, we have 2 simple 5" brackets placed on either side of the decorative bracket that we painted black.

• Also on the mailbox aisle we found a no dig stake that you drive into the ground and then set your post down in and attach with screws. It takes some serious muscle to get into the ground, I know this because I watched my husband do this part! We had to add shims around our post because the banister is smaller than the holder on the stake. We managed to get it all pretty straight in all directions and, once the shims were all hammered in, it felt pretty solid. Hopefully it'll stay that way! To the right you see the top of the stake, the rest is in the ground, and the shims that support the banister (you can buy shims at Lowes too!) Ooops! I still need to spray the base and shims black!

UPDATE: 2.10.10 If you take on this project pick a banister post that is treated for outdoor use. The guy at Lowe's told us the paint would take care of weather proofing but here we are, with a post that's splitting down the center *tear*