Post Office Box

One Saturday morning, while Kristy and I were in Dodge City, Kansas, we took our obligatory trip to the antique mall on the top floor of Eckles (if you’re from Dodge, you know what I’m talking about). There, I found an old post office box and it warmed to my body temperature as I carried it around the store.

Meanwhile, at the farmers market on Front Street, a vendor was setting up his late father’s life-project of housing antique post office doors in hard wood boxes. We were surprised to find nearly the exact same thing we had just bought nearly 15 minutes later. His boxes are finely done and I felt an inner connection to this particular door. So I bought it. 45$. I have it now and we’ve put some quarters in it.

Although, I was going to make a box for mine regardless, it was definitely inspiration. My door had years of finger stuff on it, so I cleaned it up the best I could with hydrogen peroxide and vinegar. I irrigated it with a craft syringe and scrubbed it with a tooth brush. It cleaned up ok.

I wanted the box to be something special, so I cut down relatively equal length strips of different scrap wood. We’re talking hedge, walnut, pauduk, purp, mahogany, aspen, cherry, oak, catalpa, and others I can’t remember. I joined them together in 6 panels.

They all got cut to equal length and I ripped them to 45 for the miter join.

Here’s a dry fit.

Because the panels weren’t deep enough to mount the post office door, I had to build a little door frame. This is out of aspen for no reason. I cut out the space for the door frame with a jig saw. After I knocked the frame in place I glue and clamp the vertical panels.

The door way was looking bland, so I cut some walnut veneer to go around it and glued it. I decided the piece needed a roof, so I took an old wine crate and ripped it to size. I love the look of shingles and I thought different species of veneer would look great (it does). Here is the shingling process.

The color of the pine wine crate didn’t look right, so I added some blue died veneer flashing, which was more of a pain than I thought it was going to be.

With it coming together, it looked squat sitting right on the table. I used my drill press as a lathe to taper some skinny legs out of quarter inch dowel rods and mounted them to the bottom. I end up dipping them in a red oak finish to give them a more rustic look.

To finish the apex of the roof, I cut pill shaped veneer and bent them over the top. After they were glued, I added dewaxed shellac and 2 coats of polyurethane.