Mail Station

Two Weekends ago, I decided to pick up the old muddy pallet that had been sitting around in our yard and make something out of it. After a lot of washing and scrubbing I tried the take it apart with a hammer but the nails were so long and rusted, the slats would not budge. So, I decided to get the power tools out and put our jig saw to good use. I cut all the attached pieces off and to make them all the same size and have better clean cuts, I got my husband's miter saw out and started cutting again. After a few breaks, I finally had 13 pieces that were the exact same size.

Now, what could I make with this.....I remembered a wall organizer that one of my dear neighbor has at her house. It is hung by the back door and has all kinds of knobs on it so she could have her keys, dog leash, coats.... at hand's reach when leaving the house. I also had a old vintage glass mail box that I was hoping to hang on our hallway and the idea hit me!

Why not build a mail station? And this is how my design came to life.

Do you like it?

I put all 13 slats together on the floor and used the nail gun to attach a couple of pieces of wood (2x1x45) vertically.

After looking at it, I thought it needed something else. Some type of writing to give it a vintage look.
I used a two inch stencil set I had gotten from AC Moore a few months ago and watered down some white acrylic paint to make it seem washed out. I traced the stencil with a pencil and tried to stay outside the lines as much as I could to make it look imperfect. Boy, was that hard! For years and years, I have been painting inside the lines so doing the opposite felt very unnatural.

Once the paint was dry, I just screwed in all the hooks and knobs I could find lying around and added a little basket and my antique glass mail box. I am hoping to find a small rod I can screw  to the bottom this board in order to hang the magazines that come in the mail. I will update my pictures once I find one I like.

This beauty had been sitting against the wall for two weeks until I hung it yesterday. I wasn't sure how I was going to do this, so I headed to Lowe's to see what they had. I found those L shaped hooks and thought they would do the job. I drilled holes in the studs and voila!

What do you think?

We have been hanging our keys, hats, putting our phones in the basket, writing messages on the board since yesterday.I love the way it looks. I know I can keep on adding knobs and hooks to it over the years.

Thank you for reading.