mailbox construction

A while back, my daughter told me that she missed having a mailbox with a flag -- the kind of flag you raise to let the mail carrier you have outgoing mail in the box, and that the mail carrier lowers to let you know that they've passed by and maybe you have new mail.  Semaphore communication, with time lag.  

I myself was missing having a mail box.  Our new house came equipped with a tiny little mail slot, very low in the front door, which I can only imagine is a total pain for the mail carrier:  open the screen door, squoosh and fold the magazines so they can fit through the tiny slot, bend over low, lift the flap with one hand and push the mail through with the other . . . ugh.

So, I set about making  a pair of mailboxes, one for my kiddo and one for me.  Fortunately, I happened to have exactly the right material.  That is, I had some old wooden doors, the kind that come in various thicknesses because they had thick frames and skinny panels.  I'd disassembled these doors to use the long parts for some other lumber project, and I still had the short parts.  Clearly, clearly, these short parts want to become mailboxes in their next life.  

Et voila!  Here is an unpainted version.  Note the cool pointy-beveled front edge that used to be where the door went from thick to thin.  The flag is made from . . . I think a rod from some old blinds we no longer own and a spare piece of fabric.

I didn't have hinges lying around, so I improvised.  The bottom part of the box has two eye bolts, and the lid has two long screws that stick out through the eye bolts --- kind of like the bolts on the neck of Frankenstein's monster.   This system works well!

My daughter is going to have her front porch repaired and then painted her favorite color, and when that happens I'll use some of the paint to match the mailbox to the porch.  But since I've given her star-wars-themed presents for many of her birthdays, I stuck a Yoda sticker on the unpainted version when I gave it to her.  

Lovely!!!  (???)

Here's the second mailbox, now in service on my own porch.  Our mail carrier seems very happy to use this.  Yay!  And it's nice for us, too, that we no longer have to step on our mail as we walk into the house.