You've Got Mail : Holder

We have a perpetual problem with mail in this house. We can't figure out one 'drop zone' that we like to leave it at, so it winds up everywhere. I finally put a basket on top of the dryer for mail, but that really only works if we come in from the garage. Otherwise, the mail gets left in the office on the desk. And I work from home, which means that the mail gets shoved into a drawer and forever forgotten about. Not good...I think I've reached the limit on the number of times you can claim you're late for this or that because you never saw it in the mail.

And while that's a valid and true excuse, it was time for something to be done about it!

Last week, I took a scrap piece of hardwood plywood from another project I'm working on and stained it with Minwax's English Chesnut.

A few days later, I took Krylon's Spray Paint in Blue Ocean Breeze and sprayed about a million seven light coats on top until I couldn't see the brown anymore.

In hindsight, this was kind of silly.  After this was completely dry, I sanded and sanded and sanded  until I created distressing streaks for the brown to come back through.

After I had sanded until my arm felt like it was going to fall off, I applied a coat of Minwax's water-based Polycrylic Protective Finish in Clear Semi Gloss. (To read why, see my sewing cabinet makeover.)

At this point, I had also put together the shelf for the mail to sit on, but I don't have pictures of the process. I measured the length I wanted, and then cut a 2x4 and a 1x2 at that height.  I took my nail gun and attached them (along with wood glue), then spray painted it the blue plus a brown on the outside and a white plus the blue on the inside.

Here's a shot of the outside before I attached it:

I wanted hooks to hang things like keys, Kodi's leash, my purse, an umbrella, etc., so we bought hooks at Lowe's this past weekend and attached them on the bottom.  First we pre-drilled the holes for the screws, so that we didn't split the wood.

I don't have step-by-step pictures after here.  We screwed on the hooks, then pre-drilled the back of the board for the shelf, pre-drilled holes for the shelf, and screwed them together.

And here she is, all put together!

Details shot:

And last, but definitely not least, her in action.  I took a few things from my desk and put them in their new home.

So what do you think?  Do you like the way it came out?  This is my first adventure for building in seeing something in my head and creating it without any plans.  Not too shabby for my first go round without concrete plans to help me out!

I'm linking up to the fun parties in my links tab...go see what everyone else is creating!!

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