Pallet Projects

In early spring of this year, Chris and I decided to build some bedside tables. To save money, we bought 10 wooden pallets at $2 apiece, so $20 total. It was a lot of work to take all those nails out, and a lot of the wood was damaged and unusable when we were done (hence the 10 pallets instead of 5). But in the end, we had a HUGE pile of wood...enough to make some insanely awesome paneled rustic nightstands.

 ...Because we were using so many small pieces, we used a LOT of screws. Still, we probably spent less than $15 on 3 or 4 boxes of screws, and had lots leftover.

 The drawer is SUPER NICE. We splurged here and got the nicest drawer hardware Home Depot had...It opens so smoothly and you can pull it all the way to the back of the drawer. Drawer Hardware was about $30 for two. We got the bird drawer-pulls at Hobby Lobby for about $4 each, so $8 total.

Mom and Dad gave Chris a Kreig Jig for his birthday. It was absolutely invaluable in this project...all of the wood was about 3 inches wide, so we had to attach a TON of little pieces to make any kind of surface. You can't see in these photos, but the sides and back of each one are paneled, as well as the top. It took us a lot of time to put these together--used up all of our weekends and free days for about a month and a half. We LOVE them, but we've agreed we would NEVER build these ever ever ever again....it was too much work reusing old pallets and jigging all those tiny pieces. However, it was a good deal...We paid $72 for both of them! (And that would have been closer to $50 if we had done a little work and got free pallets...still, I think the wood was a little better quality and in better shape buying it. Most pallets are hardwood, and the different kinds of woods add some nice character and color to each piece. We decided not to stain them, because we loved the natural color of the wood.

We did have a lot of wood leftover, and we didn't mind doing a few simple follow-up projects with some nicer pieces of wood.

  

 

 I actually made this coat hanger by myself!! Chris wasn't even in the shop. It was pretty simple, and we found some pretty hardware that matched the blue birds on our nightstands. Total cost: $15 for hardware from Hobby Lobby.

 It may look a little feminine, but that hasn't stopped Chris from taking it over. He much prefers hooks to hangers or towel racks. ;)

 I couldn't get a good picture of the mirror we made together...so this is the best I've got. It's also made of pallet wood, kreig jigged together and glued with mirror adhesive. Total cost: about $40. Mirrors are MUCH cheaper when you buy the pane from Home Depot and frame it yourself. It's actually pretty huge, this picture makes it look smaller than it really is.

We had some really interesting pieces that we turned into shelves. Again, it's hard to tell, but the edges are curved and uneven, and make it look like the wood just washed up on the beach. We used the Kreig Jig on these, too, so they look like floating shelves.

We thought about making a little headboard for our bed, but decided that we didn't want our house absolutely dominated by pallets. I'm planning on building a tufted white linen headboard, after we finish all the other projects on our list. (I'm redoing my spice cupboard, and we are sanding down our trunk and restaining it next week...and Chris has been doodling sketches for Ruth and Jordan's window bench for a while now. Today he told me he just "stopped by Home Depot really quick" to just "look around at some prefab that matches their wainscoting." I have a feeling that we will be building their bench in the next week or two, as well.)