When we bought our house, the main entrance was a boring, sad sight: our mailbox was black and rusty, the light was too small for the house (and did not provide enough light), the landscaping left a lot to be desired, moss was growing on the roofs of the barn and the garage, and the gravel was literally coming up off of the driveway. In a nutshell, our poor outdoor living spaces had been seriously neglected. We have been gradually improving our yards, but we still have a long road ahead of us. This summer we devoted quite a bit of time into growing some grass. We have about doubled the amount of grass that existed at our house when we moved in. We replaced the light fixtures on the front and the side of the house. And we have started saving to repave or replace the driveway.
One thing that has bothered me about our house since we moved in was our mailbox. When we started working on updating the outside of our house, we decided that most of the finishes out there should be copper. We felt that it would look nice with the overall look of our house and would age well in our area. The copper mailbox that I have been eyeing was a little out of the budget right now, plus our old one still works perfectly fine (although it's a little rusty). Still, I felt the itch to spruce up our main entrance a little and turned my attention to the mailbox. Here's the before:
I am a spray paint junkie. I'll admit it. If I don't like something in our house, my first instinct is to spray paint it until I can replace it. Knowing that I didn't want to fully replace the mailbox right now, but that I did need a change, I ran out and picked up some Rustoleum copper spray paint (that I actually have been planning on using on some old plastic planters in our sun room) for about 7 bucks. One Sunday (no mail delivery), I took the mailbox off of the house, scuffed it up with sandpaper and applied several extra-light coats of spray paint. Here it is all scuffed up and ready for the painting:
