Light up Address Box

Hello all! My husband and I have been doing a pretty extensive remodel to the outside of our house. I just wanted floating numbers somewhere on the house after I painted it. But he wanted them to light up, because apparently we didn't have enough projects going on. After some research, we came up with a plan. 

Starting with some plain wood, I stained it with an espresso color stain. 

While he cut the pieces down, I painted the backing board white to help the light reflect. We made the box the height of the plexi glass. The overall size of the box is 7 3/4" wide x 25 1/2" long x 3 1/4" deep. He used the table saw to cut in the valleys on all the sides but the top piece for the plexi glass to slide into place once the box was built. 

Next we got two sheets of plexi glass from our local hardware store. Plexi glass is in huge demand right now so you can find it just about at any hardware store. We cut two equal sized pieces. The inner piece I frosted with some frosted vinyl on the front and some frosted spray on the back. Both can be found at a craft or hardware store. The second piece is the face on the box like a shadow box. Note, we pre-drilled where the floating numbers will be on the inner plexi glass. 

For the lights, we grabbed a set of Outdoor Solar LED Strip Lights for roughly $20. 

My husband decided he wanted them to be brighter so we had to order a different set. 

The new set of lights have a blue tint to them which works well with the new house color too! You can't see it at night, but the second CLEAR sheet of plexi is on there to help keep bugs and stuff out. 

And it can still be seen well with the porch light on. The rope lights do have an adhesive strip on the back of them. I, however, did not trust that they would stay put with the heat and/or cold so I applied some outdoor epoxy to the back of them. I also caulked around the top clear sheet of plexi glass to prevent any water or bugs. 

You can see the little solar powered battery at the top there. This has been a great addition to this box, as it is one less thing I have to worry about turning on or off. 

These are the Outdoor Solar LED Strip Lights we used. All in all we probably have about $75 invested into this box.