Our lamppost has been crooked since day one of moving into our house. Well, I’ve been on a mission this spring and summer to beautify the outside of our home. Landscaping, shutters, new doors, painted driveway, new mailbox, tree removal, new lattice for the garbage, redoing the rocks alongside the driveway… you name it, we’ve tackled it. My dad even removed the well from our front yard because he’s awesome.
He even took pictures for me to put on my blog.
With the biggest eyesore of our front yard removed, we pretty much had no choice but to tackle the crooked lamppost.
It also helped that while we were on vacation by dad cleared out a spot for plants and bought a few stones to circle the post. He basically forced us into it haha.
See how much it leans? Bad news bears.
So this lamppost was the post from hell. Originally, I bought a new post to replace it all together. Then my dad suggested I simple paint the current post in the ground. So I tried that.
Many coats of black spray paint later, and it wasn’t looking to bad.
Then came time to replace the fixture at the top, which I guess we didn’t have to do…. except that when we took it off we realized it was disgusting and broken.
The fixture came off the post just fine, but the ring and the screws holding the fixture to the post wouldn’t budge. At all. I tried every trick in the book to remove those screws, from WD-40 to putting a rubber band in the groove of the screw and turning it that way. Nothing worked. So I got fed up and started to tear the metal off the post. We were going to replace that part anyway, so what did it matter?
Well, here’s a fun fact. Hammering a screw driver into metal creates a lot of sharp metal pieces. And yes, I did manage to cut my hand. And yes, I did (eventually) get a tetanus shot for the cut. And yes, the place where I got my shot it still swollen because I’m a hot mess.
See why it is the lamppost from hell yet?
If you weren’t convinced, after all of my hard work on the darn pole, I got fed up and pulled it out of the ground. I ended up trekking back to Home Depot (that’s really melodramatic since Home Depot is less than 10 minutes away… not too much of a trek) to buy and even nicer lamppost than the first one I bought. I’m talking about a built-in light sensor and an outlet. Hot damn!
Hours later, my husband and I (mainly Brian — I was so proud of him!) managed to properly wire up the new post. I don’t think I’ve ever shouted so loudly with glee over a darn light working, but we were both really shocked and really excited that it worked.
Now our post isn’t crooked (we still need to cement it in place), it has a light sensor so it turns on automatically, and it is beautifully landscaped 🙂 Total win.
That lamppost ain’t got nothing on us.
And it looks nice, too!
A Smith of All Trades 