Sneaky Bastard

A few days ago, I walked out my front door and saw a bundle of mail bound with a rubber band. Surprised, I scooped it up and continued walking to the truck. As I backed out of the driveway, I noticed that my mailbox was missing. This wasn’t surprising at all. For a long time (months? years?) I’ve had my old, broken mailbox stuck in a 5 gallon bucket filled with bricks; glamourous, I know. So finally someone yanked it out of the bucket. There were two possibilities that came to mind: 1) a neighbor was fed-up seeing the ugly thing, or 2) some kids took it. If it was some neighborhood hooligans, I figured they would have ditched it somewhere once the novelty of a box on a stick wore off. Sure enough, it was stuck in the mud about 100 yards away.

I decided it was time to replace the eyesore. This would also be a good opportunity to wire up the yard light that I had planned when putting in the new driveway (four years ago). After gingerly digging to avoid chopping through the cable lines, I discovered that their conduits run exactly where I planned to place the mailbox. I located the new post as close to the driveway as possible. The post hole is 36 inches deep, 8 inches in diameter. I poured some gravel into the bottom and set a form tube. I used a bit less than two 60 pound bags of concrete.

The next step is to order a mailbox online (I was disappointed with Home Depot’s selection) and trim out the post with some redwood to match the fence.