A New Mailbox

We lost the mailbox somewhere in the renovation. The mailbox we put up sixteen years ago. So, yeah, that was not a bad run.

Anyway, I ordered a new mailbox after we tore the basement apart about eight times trying to find it, to no avail. We chose a pretty basic brass mailbox keeping in mind our primary issue with the old mailbox which was that it was so small that things got jammed in there and torn up. The mailbox arrived very quickly, which is good because one of the reasons why I was anxious to get the mailbox reinstalled was that it had our house numbers on it so nobody could find our house when delivering packages.

Then we had an evening of searching for good-looking house numbers online because we are perfectionists. We couldn't find any we liked so we used a decent font and printed them on the 3D printer.

I posted a picture of the numbers kind of haphazardly laid on the mailbox on my Facebook page and every one of my perfectionist friends blew a head gasket at the idea that I hadn't properly kerned them, so I'll save you the trauma and show you how we actually laid out the numbers, using a template.

The slight challenge was that the 3D printer had some shrinkage from the original Illustrator file, so we had to size up the template a few times to get the size right. It worked out in the end, though.

Then Noel attached it to the door, and I think it looks pretty good. When contractors can work again the painters are going to come finish painting the exterior, so it will come down, temporarily, and be stored in a very safe location.

(The brass will patina a little over time, but it should stay this colour for many years because there is a bit of a finish on it. At some point we may change our minds about the numbers and choose a different style or colour, but these work.)

posted by ayse on 05/24/20