Build Your Own Mailbox

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If you're a newcomer to the area, do consider your neighbors. Not until you're an established member of the community does your mailbox lose social significance. When Harvey, the local dairy farmer, took a wife 30 years his junior, he sent eyebrows (even farther) up when he adorned his mailbox with a model of a big, masculine Holstein bull. Frowns turned to smiles a year later when the box was adorned with a bunch of blue balloons to announce the birth of his son.

Building Your Support System

As for your mailbox's support system, it can be anything from a stout wooden pole to an angle-iron fence post. Probably the easiest material to work with is a four- or six-inch (square or round) timber of pressure-treated lumber. This so-called "PT" is real easy to find—you can pick some up in outside storage at any country lumberyard. It's a greenish color, but you'll see it age to gray after time and weathering. It's infused with a copper/arsenic preservative, and will last an entire generation or more.

Once you've selected your post, fasten the box directly on top of it. Or, for a post with an out-jutting arm that won't be damaged by passing vehicles, affix a horizontal crossmember a foot down from the top of a six-foot post. Miter a single 4 x 4 horizontal into the vertical member, or bolt or lagscrew a pair of 2 x 4 or 2 x 6 PT boards in an upside-down "L" or "T" to each side of the post. Diagonal supports at the front of an "L" or back of a "T" will add strength. Cut and fit the wood before sinking the post—it's easiest to anchor posts before attaching the horizontals.

Movable mailboxes are a good idea if you plan to modify your driveway soon. To do this, wedge the post with rocks or short lengths of 2 x 4s in a couple of stacked concrete blocks or inside a concrete, gravel, or sand-filled old-time milk can, weather-proofed wooden keg, ceramic butter crock, or other attractive, rustic container. Cap the top with tar or mortar if the container can't be drilled at bottom—lest it fill with water, freeze, and burst at the same time it rots a wooden post.

Attaching Box To Post

There are hole-drilled attachment flanges every few inches around the bottom of commercially made mailboxes. Don't try to nail the box directly to the post. Instead, cut a board to fit into the skirt, fasten the board securely to the post, and then nail the box to the board. You may want to move or replace the box some day, so don't use hard-to-remove conventional nails. Use such removable fasteners as weatherproof drywall screws or dual-headed pull-nails (used to attach electric fence insulators).

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