Eeeeeeeeeek!!!

I'm pretty sure that's the excited little sound I heard coming from my mailbox the day I announced "I have GOT to do something about that ridiculous mailbox!"  We have lived in this house for over a year, and this is what our mailbox looked like until recently.

It's hard to say whether I pixelated our house number because I'm worried about a stalker coming to steal all of our inexpensive stuff, or whether I just discovered the pixelate feature on Picnik.

Now, if you'll notice, there are a few things wrong with this mailbox.  First of all it was even uglier than it looks in these pictures, in person.  Also, our last name isn't Curry (although if it WAS Curry, I would hope that people would constantly be trying to take us out for Indian food just because of the irony.  That would be awesome.)  My third and final observation is that this mailbox is firmly cemented into a brick...thing.  There's no way we were going to just pop that sucker out and put in a new one.  And Anthony wasn't digging the whole, "Let's just take a sledgehammer to it" idea.  So we just left it sitting in all its ugliness.  For a year.  Plus a few months.

One fine day I trotted out to the mailbox with a piece of sandpaper and a razor blade.  In about two minutes I had un-Curried our mailbox.

Boy howdy.  I should have done THAT a long time ago.  Then I whipped out my trusty drop cloth and some painter's tape.

THEN I took my oil rubbed bronze spray paint and applied lots of thin, even coats.

Here it is a few coats in...

Did I mention it takes several coats...  But I certainly didn't want paint dripping down the front of my mailbox, now did I?  Here she is almost done.

Next up, re-numbering and lettering her.  I really kind of hated the only options at Home Depot and Lowe's, so I decided to just try scrap booking stickers.  Bad idea?  Probably.  But wait!  There's more!  After I got the stickers on, I let 'em have it with some lacquer.

And it seems to have worked magnificently!

I love it!  I also love the progression of the leaves in the background.  So what do you think?  Any friendly wagers on how long until my not-so-outdoor-safe stickers will last?  Or how long I will be able to stand those awful bushes before I pull them out of the ground?