Week 33...

 Me (May 2023) : I will not buy anything big at Brimfield this year.  I'm definitely not buying another bank of PO boxes.  I don't need another project. 

Also Me: 

And so, the bank of PO boxes came home with me, as mentioned in my previous post in May. (Brimfield for those who don't know, is a massive flea market/antique show held three times a year in central Massachusetts) It sat in the garage for a while, until I scored a bunch of free mahogany off  Buy Nothing. Two weeks ago, I dragged it out from under a pile of stuff in the garage, removed the locks we didn't have keys for, cut the latches off and reinstalled them, then gave it a good coat of spray paint. 

Then I used some scrap plywood and encased the bank in a solid box.  The Hubs busted out the power washer over the weekend and washed all the wood down since it had been stored outside. Once it was dry, I added the planks of mahogany.  They are 1" thick, which I wouldn't normally do, but free is free...

Then the trim...

I remembered to save all the saw dust this time! (Pro tip: If you save the sawdust, mix it with some glue, you can use it like wood filler, plugging all the holes with a perfect match. 

After filling all the holes and sanding it forever, I gave it a good coating of linseed oil to bring out the natural colors and grains of the wood, then two coats of poly. That's when I realized that my original plan of hair pin legs wasn't going to fly.  This sucker weighs about 80 pounds. So, I turned my sights towards cast iron. I checked websites, Esty, Amazon. They all wanted WAY too much money, plus the size was odd, too narrow it becomes a tipping hazard, to wide, it will look weird. After searching I realized that an antique sewing machine base was the exact size I needed. And as it happened, someone was selling this one on Marketplace for cheap money. A quick coat of paint is all it needed...

In case you can't make it out, this is no old Singer base.  It reads, "Jordan Marsh, Boston Mass".  As in the iconic Jordan Marsh Department store that survived downtown for over 100 years.  The same one my Mom shopped for Easter dresses in as a little girl, and that I shopped in in college. The wheel still spins too. Any hoo...  four screws later and here we are....

It's serving as our mail center for now.  Each person has a mailbox, and one overflow box for stuff that needs to be filed. Later it will be a fantastic storage unit for my Cricut vinyl in the craft room, but for now it's found a home. The spare keys are glued into the broken locks and act as a handle for the door.  I don't like the white hang tags, so the hunt is on for some tin embossable ones that I can add our names/box numbers into. 

Perhaps, I will find the perfect key tags at the next Brimfield in September.