Upcycled Mailbox – A Storage Cubby for Our Vegetable Garden!
This old mailbox was my grandparents for many, many, many years before I came along and used it as long as I could before it was finally time to retire it. I didn’t have the heart to toss it though and its been literally sitting in our flower garden, by our front step, for all the years since. I thought about bringing it in and hanging it on the wall or placing it above one of our hutches as decoration but it was just too big for either of those things. It finally dawned on me where it would be perfect this spring when we started working on the vegetable garden!
Its weird how many years it took me to realize that this mailbox would be perfect for the vegetable garden. I ended up with soggy gloves and a pile of gardening tools just sitting out there all summer long.
I really needed a cubby of some kind for sure!
Our vegetable garden is a good hike from the garage so I knew I would never manage to walk to the garage, get my gardening tools, walk out to the garden and then also manage to get my tools back to the garage only to have to retrieve them daily for the rest of forever.
It was just never going to happen.
I absolutely needed a place in the garden for storage.
First I hand sanded the old mailbox down with sand paper and then steel wool to get the old stickers and grime off of the galvanized steel.
Then I decided to paint the mailbox. This was actually a tough decision for me because for as long as I can remember my grandparents’ always had a steel mailbox at the end of their driveway.
But my garden has been crying out for some color and bright red just felt perfect! (And this certainly is not the last of the additions to the garden this year – we really want to give it some character!)
A couple of coats in Rustoleum’s bright red high gloss spray paint and my Grandparents’ old mailbox looks practically brand new!
It easily stores all of my gardening tools and a couple of extra pairs of gloves too!
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Now I REALLY wish I hadn't let my husband talk me into tossing my parents old mailbox!
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I’ve done this also. And I painted mine in red also. 👍🏼
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That's great Anna, we love ours!
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