Letterboxes

It's been a long cold miserable winter here in Porirua so I haven't done much in the garden until it started warming up about a month ago. We even had 2 freak polar blast storms which brought snow down to sea level here in Tītahi Bay. Snow in this part of New Zealand is just totally unheard of!

So... I've been out in the garden again getting rid of all the weeds that have accumulated and after 2 of the residents here in Thornley Mews received notification from New Zealand Post that the letterboxes were "Inadequate", I decided it was time to do something about it.

Here is a picture of the letterbox area when we first moved in.

The following picture was taken in August 2010 after the letterbox area was given a tidy up.

So we removed the old letterbox stand and it basically disintegrated on us when we picked it up, but we were kind of expecting that. We decided to build a small retaining wall which will not only hold back some of the dirt on the bank, but will allow us to mount the new letterboxes on the face of it.

We had to hand dig the two main holes as our underground power cable ran in the vicinity of this area but the power company could not tell us exactly where. This was a real mission and a half as not only was the area full of rocks, but full of Pohutukawa roots (from the tree behind) as well! After much swearing, cursing and such, the holes were done, the posts were in and the rails were started.

We originally had planned on using railway sleepers, but they are ridiculously expensive and the pine was less than 1/3 of the price.

Once the rails were completed, we gave the whole wall 2 coats of Charcoal woodstain. I really hate the way pine weathers to a horrible grey colour and I much prefer to use stain instead of paint.

Our brand new stainless steel letterboxes arrived from Find Me At Night and we mounted them in a staggered pattern, otherwise they would have been too close together to use the newspaper slot. We also applied No Junk Mail decals (for the residents that wanted them) and these were purchased on Trade Me. We were all really impressed with the transformation and all sat around with cups of coffee and Chilli Chocolate admiring the stately new entrance to Thornley Mews.

Of course we still have a few little things left to finish up, such as the paving in front and planting out the garden behind. These will hopefully be done in the next few weeks.