Adding Curb Appeal with a New Mailbox Post
The first impression of your home starts as soon as someone arrives at your house. They look at the landscaping, your yard, and maybe even your mailbox. Now, fortunately, we have the most beautiful mailbox painted for us by a friend as a wedding gift, but the post was another story.
At the start of the COVID-19 Quarantine, we decided to give our mailbox post a little facelift. Our original post was a standard black metal post that we bent into a straight-ish shape when we moved in (it was probably hit by a snowplow a bit too much).
Brian did some research on the tools that we would need, and decided to make this a quick project with extra wood that we had stored in our basement.
Items we needed:
- 2 8 ft 4x4s pressure treated
- A few deck screws (2 1/2 inches)
- 1 ft of pressure treated 1x8
- Post Hole Digger
- A Jigsaw
Brian was able to do this project in just a few hours with the help of the specialty T-Shank Jigsaw blade.
To start out, I did some research on the height of mailboxes, and according to USPS, these need to be 41-45 inches high from the road and 6-8 inches back from the road. We have a curb so we had to do a few extra measurements.
From there, you also want to make sure that you post goes down at least a foot into the ground for stability.
After doing some measuring, Brian was able to use the T-Shank Jigsaw blade to cut two cuts into the mailbox wood. Because these fit together at an angle, you essentially cut half way through the board to make them fit together. Brian used this youtube video as a guide and then used the T-Shank Jigsaw blade instead of the circular saw to make the necessary cuts.
Brian then installed a support beam on a diagonal for additional support, and then stained the post with a White Stain. Pro tip: white stain looks just like white paint, but it doesn't peel when it is outside!
Using the post hole digger, we were able to quickly get the mailbox post in the ground. Brian then added the 1x8 on top of the horizontal rail to screw the mailbox in place.
We put the mailbox in place, and while I was a little nervous, sure enough our mail arrived two minutes later, and our mail woman commented not only that she loved the new post, but that it was the perfect height! Success!