Smashing the crap out of mailboxes...as you do

After a slight change in our circumstances recently, we may actually get some renovating done this year after all. Over the weekend we decided to start off with a small project that has been bugging both Husband and I for ages. Our mailbox, a whopping great brick structure 2 metres long and 1 metre wide, simply had to go. We really thought it would be a day's work from start to finish, but like all seemingly small jobs it just snowballed. Smashing it down was a piece of cake and really quite fun. Cleaning up was, as usual, a time consuming pain in the arse. The swarms of roaches running in all directions elicited plenty of squeals and jigging on the spot from the girls. But the real kicker came when we got down to the foundation of the thing. For a structural bafflement, it was built with all the solid reinforcement of a freaking bomb shelter. Actually, when we struck the steel framed slab of concrete underneath, we did wonder for a moment whether we might find you know, remains or something under there. Or at least some kind of treasure.

I think maybe some of the neighbours had the same idea, as a few of them were beginning to gather around to help with our attempts to lift the bastard ;)

Finally we ended up breaking the slab up into quarters with a sledgehammer and going through the steel with an angle-grinder. 

Cheers went up as the concrete was lifted away, everyone had a peek to see if there was anything interesting under there and since there wasn't and it was getting dark, everyone went their separate ways. 

Thankfully, we had just enough light left to cement the new mailbox into the ground before packing up for the evening.

Sunday was all about getting a garden happening around the new mailbox. So it was all digging, soil preparation and transplanting  my lavender and a few rosemary bushes from the back garden around to the front. I had to give everything a hard pruning, so hopefully in a little while it will come back nice and bushy and I can get some better pics of it all.

So that was our weekend, a little project blown out to a big project. But, you know what? It's really good to be back into it and I'm very excited about moving forward!

Cas x