Some projects happen quickly. Others sit on the to-do list for a year or two.
And then there’s our mailbox.
I have nagged Bruce for more than a decade to do something about our mailbox. In his defense, there was a very good reason we never bothered making it pretty: we’re probably on our twentieth mailbox since moving here.
Yes. Twenty.
Every winter, without fail, the snowplow manages to take a whack at it at least once. Sometimes the mailbox survives. Sometimes… not so much.
For years, it sat perched on quite possibly the ugliest metal pole you’ve ever seen. It wasn’t charming. It wasn’t quaint. It barely closed.
But it was practical. And replaceable.
The Mailbox Problem
The bigger issue was that we really couldn’t put a proper post where the mailbox had always been.
Over the years, the county has cleaned out the ditches along our road so deeply that there’s barely any usable ground between the ditch and the road. Add in the snowplow situation, and there simply wasn’t a good place to install something more permanent.
Eventually, we admitted defeat.
The mailbox was going to have to move to the far entrance of our U-shaped driveway—the entrance farthest from both the house and the office.
Is that going to be annoying when it’s 15 degrees outside and I have to trek down the driveway for the mail?
Absolutely.
But then I started thinking…
What if instead of simply moving the mailbox, I turned that end of the driveway into a proper little entrance? Flowers lining the drive. A pretty mailbox. Something that actually makes the walk down to get the mail enjoyable.
And, well, you probably know where this is going.
But that part is for another blog post.
Down Came the Ugly Pole
Once we finally agreed that the mailbox deserved a proper home, Bruce dismantled our sad little setup, cut off the old metal pole and erected an actual wooden mailbox post at its new location.
After waiting more than ten years for this moment, I obviously couldn’t just put a plain mailbox on top of it.
I had to paint it.
The new mailbox became its own little art project, with a folk-art-inspired design, our 1848 house number, flowers, vines and plenty of tiny details. I painted the post to coordinate with it, and suddenly something that had been an eyesore for more than a decade felt like it actually belonged here.
Naturally, I documented the whole thing in my sketchbook—because apparently even the mailbox gets a sketchbook spread now.
So Ye Olde Mailbox is officially painted, planted and proudly standing at the end of the drive.
After years of pulling in and seeing that ugly metal pole, this little corner finally feels like us.
Of course, we haven’t made it through a Western New York winter yet.
So now we wait.
Will its new location finally keep it safely out of the snowplow’s path?
Will this be the first mailbox in years to survive an entire winter?
Or will I be writing The Tragic Tale of Ye Olde Mailbox come February?
Fingers crossed. 🤞📬❄️
In the meantime, I’m already plotting the flowers that will surround it next spring.
Because apparently moving the mailbox wasn’t enough. Now it needs a garden.
