The Ugliest Mailbox in the Neighborhood!

My mother would cringe every time she looked at our mailbox.

It wasn't that we didn't want to replace it. We just couldn't find a mailbox we liked.


It occurred to me that until we find the PERFECT mailbox, we could just use the Loctite Extend to cover the rust and paint it with the left-over white paint I had from fixing the screen door.


The Extend changed the color of the rust and seemed to just dissolve and smooth it out.


You have to leave some of the rust on so that the spray has something to work with.


I covered the house number with painter's tape and then primed and painted the mailbox.

I painted the flag red next.

We also bought new numbers to replace the faded older ones.

Ron of Hotel Waikiki just told me I didn't have to prime. Arrrghhhh! He's right! The Loctite Extend acts as a primer. Ah well... looks like we added an unnecessary extra step.


Now I'm wondering if I (or maybe my brother... if I can convince him to do it) should paint a snail on this side of the mailbox. I wonder if the neighbors would get the joke. (snail mail?)

Postscript: I was telling our fire fighter neighbor about the Extend this afternoon and he said the department uses Extend by the gallons. A small can is not enough to keep everything in shape. He says it does work well. We were very happy to hear that.

Looks like replacing the mailbox goes down to the bottom of the To-Do list.

Postscript 2: Mom just looked at the box, grinned and said, "Now we have the nicest mailbox on the street."

Rusting Away in Hawaii

We bought these steel doors at Home Depot because we were tired of termites eating our wooden screen doors. You can just imagine our exasperation when these painted steel doors started to rust. It hasn't even been a year since Art installed them! When we mentioned this problem at the Builders Home Show, the presenters all nodded knowingly.

"This is Hawaii," they said. "It's the salt air."

Art was figuring he'd have to scrub the rust off with a steel brush, hope he got it all, prime and then paint it.

Then he talked to his brother-in-law, Kent in California and he suggested a type of spray that would combine with the rust and turn it solid, leaving it a black color. Then you'd just paint over it. Kent said it worked like a charm two years ago, but he couldn't remember the name of the product.

We went to Home Depot and looked for something like this, but couldn't find it. We started talking to another fellow in the aisle who happened to be looking for a similar thing. The good thing is he knew what it was called. EXTEND!

Home Depot didn't have it, but we found it at Lowes. Yahoo!

Art will try using it today if it doesn't rain again. We're going to have to cover the areas that aren't rusted because if the spray gets on unrusted parts, the directions say the solution could cause those areas to rust.

We also bought some Lithium grease spray that window people told us we should spray over metal parts to keep it from rusting. Then there's a silicon spray to keep your sliding windows rolling like silk.

Rust and termites, the bane of Hawaii!