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What took shape in the first part of the Pallet Canvas Chair DIY Howto is now finished. After the lounge chair was grinded, mounted and glazed, the provisional wiring/chaining had to be put in a sustaineable form, and at last, there was a critical lack of cushioning

Environment friendly, transparent glaze: saliva resistant and weatherproof

Varnished pallet canvas chair, painted, seat detail

Addendum regarding the varnish: I went with a transparent glaze, criteria were suitability for outdoor use/weather resistance and lowest possible toxilogical risk. The adjacent properties (“sweat and saliva resistant”) and ecological safety convinced me. Available at the hardware store. Results: nice surface effect here – slightly glossy wood grain and weatherproof. I have used up half the can, though – reach was labeled as about 8 to 10 sqwuaere meters and i really used qwuite a lot niow, but better to use it up than have a dried up one-third of a can of glaze later. And an untreated pallet wood absorbs quite a lot of glaze, believe me.

Next step: useable/reliable “wiring”. I got in total three tension belts, two simple ones for the backrest adjustment, a slightly stronger one with a ratchet for the footer/general ankle/adjustment. The latter takes quite some tension, once you’re seated, while the backrest tension belts carry a more easy load.

Pallet garden chair, strapped footer tension belt

Pallet canvas chair, adjustable backrest with tension belts

The foot part “wired” with a ratchet tension belt. I used most of the quite lengthy belt, a shorter one will do, too, but this way, i have some “pulley effect” – easier adjustment. Ring screws/wall hooks are simply drilled into the wood, mostly by hand, added two final turns with the pliers. Does the job.

DIY pallet chair, adjustable with tension belts

DIY pallet chair, comparison with (preliminary) temporary chain wiring

For comparison, the tension belt solution vs. the the first test with chains. Chains are generally unsuitable for this purpose, I’ve also changed the positions of the hooks/fixation points – both belts of the backrest are now sideways instead of on the front – easier adjustment and no friction points at wood edges.

Cushion for deck chair, dull and dowdy

The footer/main tension belt, however, was completely moved to the inner sides of the attached pallet parts. I wanted to avoid to stumble over it and also desired an “straight” force on the mounting points. Once adjusted, i also rarely change the angles here, so no need to have it perfectly reachable.

What can you do with a boring deck chair cushion from the supermarket, when the format is ok, the cushioning thick and – technically – wonderful, but its looks are just plain awful? You dress it with some t-shirts. The sleeves can be used to fix the cushion as a whole at the chair.

Pallet garden chair with properly tightened seat upholstery

DIY canvas chair with fixed seat cushion

Pallet deck chair, upholstered, plus blanket

DIY pallet relaxing chair, with dressed cushion and blanket, completed

If it still looks too improvised, of course you can simply throw a blanket over it.

Task completed. Well, to be honest, i consider putting some rollers under the footer part for easier adjustment and movement, but thats fairly optional. Experiences: very comfy reading chair, definitely waterproof and one of my favourite places now. I can recommend it.

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Pallet bed, double bed: Base structure made of timber beams

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I moved to a new flat, and therefore had to dissect some furniture. Transportation went fine, and afterwards, why not restructure some of the pallet furniture? This was mandatory for the pallet sofa which didn’t fit in its old L-Form, but with the double bed, i changed some details which i now really like.

In the former version, the mattress was positioned quite “on top” of the bed, now i have it moved downwards. Mattress surface and the surrounding storage area are not exactly justified now, but much closer.

Like before, the substructure is made of single timber beams – three beams across, three beams along with drilled holes for the slat holdings. When mounting the pallet elements, check the correct distance to have

• a) enough (but not too much) space for the mattress and
• b) the correct distance for the spalts, which otherwise may slip out of their fittings. Easiest method: attach one of them on all four corners/both ends of the frame.

Double bed from pallets – Installation of the first pallet element

Pallet bed: pallet elements, fully assembled

Afterwards, attach the pallet elements. Sometimes I could just screw them onto the base structure, sometimes i had to use some metal angle, when the top pallet boards prevented to drill straight down through the bottom boards into the wooden beams of the base structure.

Pallet bed: pallet elements, fully assembled

Pallet bed, with 1.40m wide mattress

Pallet bed: Double bed, lowered mattress

After mounting the first pallet element, repeat with elements 2-4. Then we are almost done: put in the slat fittings, mount the slats, and throw your mattrerss on top. If you use other slat techniques – e.g. rolled slats as i did in the single pallet bed, its quite the same procedure. Now move your bed to its final position and fix it firmly to the wall with brackets and fixings.

Annotations to the lowered bed variant: i still have the very same storage space height underneath (the drawer is unmodified), the whole bed itself is a bit lower now, regarding the mattress surface. Its also about 3cm less wide. All in all, no great changes, but some nice details and alltogehter, a nicer variant in my eyes. I really like the more levelled matress and pallet surfaces. .

DIY illuminated pallet bed, viev angle 1

DIY illuminated pallet bed, viev angle 2

Final details: the green neon lights are again mounted below for nice illumination effect, and a gutted, revamped and linux-converted iMac is now added for the evening movie session. Everything looks nice, is comfortable and highly usable.

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White pallet bench on rolls, Bochum

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A known phenomenon: when you start to work with pallets, you start to see them anywhere, I had a pallet glassed look through my neighbourhood already, and still i found quite a lot more pallet furniture just a short walk away. First, the “Kugelpudel” – in german, its the rhyming translation of “ball poodle”, selling the best icecream i ever had, with its upcycled furniture. Then, there was the “nature festival” with an almost pornographic usage of pallets – for seating, dj tables and even a complete stage. In between, there was a cultural event in a part of Bochum called “Speckschweiz” (Bacon swizerland? sounds like paradise ) where i met some unexpected pallets in a bunker. Unfortunately and as its always the case in those “inspirational picture posts” – the origin/creation of the respective pallet furniture is not documented.

The Kugelpudel and its pretty, mobile pallet benches. I guarantee: no money nor icecream was given/taken for the following statement. The ice cream here is the best I ever had, well, at least in the Ruhr Area. “Icecream” here means cream and sorbet (vegan), of which they offer not too many, but constantly changing flavors, from common Straciatella, (vegan) orange or raspberry sorbet to quite “exotic” stuff like sesame-jujube or cucumber. Sounds unfamiliar in the ice cream context, nevertheless, it tastes great. Moreover, they make virtually everything by themselves: ice cream, cake, cocktails and interiors. Mainly through re- and upcycling. Rollable pallet benches, tables from street signs and plastic barrels, pallet furniture with interesting drawer constructions, which inspired me for a kitchen drawer cabinet.

Mobile garden bench made of pallets, Bochum

Movable pallet garden bench, white, Bochum

Garden pallet bench, Kugelpudel,Bochum

Back to the benches: they are glazed several times – I had an entertaining chat with their creator, who seems to use quite the same equipment and methods like me – lots of cleaning and grinding, cut-off saw and crowbar, usage of the same metal fittings and angles, even the same self-drilling wood screws. He glazed more layers, but mostly because of heavy outdoor use and and factors like food, children, etc. I like the processing and I am very impressed how the wheels make the whole story again look more “lightweight”, less massive. Friendly furniture.

Video installation with euro pallets in a bunker, Bochum

Pallet art installation: Videoprojection on pallets, Bochum

Less friendly: a video installation in a bunker. For one week, a district of Bochum becomes some kind of “distributed arts and culture installation”, including an unused bunker which was largely cleared out and cleaned, with installations, readings, performances and art exhibitions. Among other things, there was this video installation: bunker atmosphere with NS-video projection. Cold in more than one meaning, strange and rather depressing.

Pallet garden installation, front view

Pallet garden with potted plants, rear view

Much more kind and friendly: the “Nature Festival” in Bochum. This small piece of garden is surrounded by the already known pallet benches – here its quite clear how “chunky”, bulky the static, three pallets high version looks compared to the “two-pallets plus wheels”-variants at the “Kugelpudel”.

Garden installation made of pallets and flower pots, side view

Anyway, i liked the flower installation, and as occasionally noted: I sometimes imagine something like this to decay picturesquely in the garden, being slowly eaten up and overgrown by plants. As you like.

Some pallet porn found some steps further.

The C60 Collaboratorium at RUB UNiversity is planning a new campus and introduced the “A campus for the city – architectural presentation” on a pallet stage. In several pavilions urban planning designs for the quarter are exhibited, all placed onto a stage of pallets, somehow symbolizing the preliminary, “work in progress”-character of the plans.

Some days later, the pallet stage was actually in use, as seen in the pictures further below. Here its still in the (nearly completed) building procedure.

Pallet stage, Bochum – Back

Pallet stage, work in progress – seating area

Open air stage made of Euro pallets, Bochum

Open air pallet stage: panoramic view

I didn’t experience live music the following days though, but there were quite interesting surround sound installations of sound-generating smartphones connected to solar panel-powered speakers instead . The meaning didn’t really reveal itself to me, but the use of technology was creative and therefore quite fitting my taste.

Later on the Nature Festival i found some more pallet furniture pieces. Benches, chairs, tables, even a DJ booth. How the latter works with turntables, being quite shock-sensitive, I do not know.

Pallet table: Simple version, euro pallets, untreated

Pallet canvas chair, euro pallets, two-seater, euro pallets untreated

DJ booth made of pallets, Nature Festival Bochum

I really liked the two-seater for its cool palette-“crossing” look. This one should be easily upgradeable with an adjustable backrest. The canvas chair is quite cool, although I admit to like my adjustable pallet canvas chair better. This variant looks more simple and rustic, therefore maybe its even better suited as a nice, kind of retro looking fixed installation in the garden than the more “sophisticated” looks of the adjustable model I created.

Garden deck chair from pallets, single-seater in a fixed design, untreated

Garden chair made of pallets, single-seater, rear view

Euro pallet stage in use, Bochum Ehrenfeld

Last impressions: the palette stage in use. Places to have a sit down, pavillons for the exhibited city quarter plans. Again, I had a short chat with the creator/designer – we both agreed that the “preliminary”, “improvised” character on the one hand and the construction- and work-related associations to pallets made a perfect fit for the theme of the event.

In the planning phase they considered a closed surface, but switched to the “natural” pallet surface – looking more lightweight, and a better fit to the occasion. The pallets were of course officially bought in larger quantity, at a low double-digit price per pallet for once used pallets (used, first choice: cheaper, still clean and undamaged, but with some “used” look without being filthy).

Really cool about all this stuff: its all about some 100 meters away from my place, only exception being the bunker, which is about 15 minutes to walk to. Sometimes i think those pallets keep haunting me

Pallet stage, populated and with exhibition pavillons

Pallet stage – panorama view with swing installation

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Pallet kitchen cabinet: the very rough idea

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The following needs not necessarily to be built with pallets, neither are pallets sufficient for its creation. The occasion for its construction were the really nice drawers i had as a leftover from a cupboard which reached its final destination while my last move to the new flat. I had to throw out most cupboard parts, but kept the shelves for being quite noce wood and looking useable, and of course the drawers, which i really like. And hey, I always build my stuff with pallets, so why not here?

The idea: Pallets as the sideboards of the cupboard, drawers on the pallet legs acting as the “rails” the drawers are placed upon. It came out totally different (as it sometimes happens), but the early plan still looks like an interesting option. Measuring pallet and drawer height, it became clear that this plan would result in a poor use of space – even if gaps between the drawers still would be an option, especially because of the opportunity to put stuff in the drawers higher as the drawers themselves are. But hey, i wanted a cabinet with three drawers instead of the two which would only be possible with the first concept. Well then.

Pallet drawer cabinet, raw material: one disposable pallet

Luckyly i also did keep the metal rails for the drawers from the abandoned cupboard. If you don’t have those, you can simply use thin wood for the drawer sliders. But I’m getting ahead of the actual progress.

First: you need good, clean pallet sections for the side parts. One pallet was totally sufficient for me here – I removed the “footer parts” completely, cutted the pallet straight in half (through the mittle woodboard) and had my ususal cleaning/grinding/nail removing proceture. Keep the planks of the footer parts, we’ll need those, too.

While this is going to be kitchen furniture, maybe you should be even a bit more dilligent at cleaning/grinding, as you usually are. Moreover, consider wood treatment. I’ve now left the wood untreated. Let’s see how it lasts.

Untreated pallet halves for the side elements of the kitchen cabinet

Pallet parts for kitchen cabinet, cleaned and grinded

The following assembly of the resulting kitchen drawer cabinet is quite simple on the one hand, on the other hand its a little notchy.

First you’ll need to measure at what distance and how high the drawer guide rails have to be fixed. I had a bit of luck – the placement always fitted with the pallet boards. Then measure the width of the cupboard needed for the drawers. Cut wood boards in corresponding length out of the footer boards you removed ewarlier from the pallet. I screwed directly through the pallet boards into the boards, using them as a stabilizing element below each drawer and as a spacer keeping the right distance for the drawer rails.

Pallet cupboard with drawers: drawer rails and support boards installed

Drawer rails and support boards, other side of the pallet cupboard

On top, i used one of the shelves as a work area/cover. This fitted quite OK, again, its up to your taste to use a kitchen workboatrd or other material. Just something thats ok for kitchen use and gives a bit more stability. You can also take pallets but then you may need some cover – it’s a kitchen cabinet, and there’s fat, moisture, whatever, and i think its quite annoying when the chopped vegetables fall through gaps into the kitchen drawers.

DIY kitchen cabinet with drawers: Top rail and work area

Drawers in use. Here its crucial to have have measured and worked accurately in advance. The typical “unprecise” pallet material has its downsides here. I had about half an inch more distance between the drawer rails than the net width of the drawers themselves, so slight warpings in the wood, etc. should not lead to tilting drawers. On the other hand, the drawers must not fall off the rails. The latter is hardly possible due to the spacer boards, but still.

In this specific case, it worked out just fine because of the tolerance space used, and moreover, the possibly warped palette side elements are somehow “pulled into the right distance” with the spacer boards.

Kitchen cabinet from pallets, with drawers: Completion

The result. As a “pallet furniture piece”, it looks slightly isolated now, but I think it will become more a “part of the whole” later, for i think about a concept for a “kitchen cupboard alternative” made of pallets: a kind of “wall-bench” of pallets on which I can hang pots, kitchen equipment, etc., with nice hooks and shelves. I still do not have the picture, but a vague idea, and I’m quite sure we’ll see it here

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Between all the cuddly furniture stuff, a few pictures out of the RPG/LARP corner. What do you do when you like movies like Mad Max and role-playing games like Shadowrun? Those true at heart and strong at will build their own post-apocalyptic scenario and use it for play, fun and party. In such a way, the Gran Paradiso Roadhouse Club was built by some of my ex-colleagues and when i paid a visit there, i was quite surprised and delighted to find some pallet furniture stuff of the more crude kind. Well, i shouldn’t have been surprised, since id’s RAGE one should know that pallet interior belongs to any somehow serious post-apocalyptic scenario. What gave me the opportunity to take some shots of some unexpected, pretty rustic pallet furniture.

Low pallet table, also usable as bench – Gran Paradiso

Low pallet table – front view, Gran Paradiso

First item: very simple table made from half a pallet, with pallet quarters simply screwed at the short ends to serve as legs. Alternatively, you can use a table of this height as a bank, too.

Owed to the occasion, the pieces of furniture here are built in a less “homely” way, not as cuddly and friendly as the stuff I’m building, but thats totally appropriate for the intended use. The results are solid, functional and are usually built rather quick. An improvised set of pallet garden furniture or a rustic party room furniture should be built rather quick in this style.

Pallet table, three pallets used – Gran Paradiso

Bar table made of euro pallets – rustic, rugged and illuminated, Gran Paradiso

More a bar table made of pallets: two euro pallets for the table legs, one atop for the tabletop. The assembly is again quite crudely nailed/screwed, and this construction could definitely be donme in a more “apalling” way, but here, the crude look is simply intended. Nevertheless, feel free to have your table built with less rough beamys for stability, take some angles/fittings instead and paint it in nice colors for a nice garden table, but theres the other choise to build it exactly as crude and rough like this one, if you happen to like the looks of some improvised post-apocalyptic desert club (i like those). Have it illuminated somehow stylish and you’re done for an indie club or party room interior. OTOH, in this “cruder” form, I can well imagine something like this table as a work table in the garden or behind the house – My apologies for the completely inappropriate, almost blasphemous association: you can place even some heavier some potted flowers on this piece and repot them without worrying if something breaks, gets dirty, whatever. Also already cared for: correct working height when standing.

Large table, pallets and heavy wood bars, Gran Paradiso

Wide pallet table – party table, detail without flashlight. Gran Paradiso

Quite the same thing in a larger format: a quite solid pallet party room table. I guess that the tabletop consists of some heavy floorboards or scaffolding boards. Here the substructure/table legs is consequently constructed more heavy/solid. Due to bad flashlight on my smartphone, i wasn’t able to take a picture of the “whole thing”: the table is some feet long and should do the job as a main party table even with some more (and lively) guests invited.

Pallet Hut: Warehouse in the Gran Paradiso

Detail: Pallet warehouse in the Gran Paradiso

The local warehouse. Again: usage associations and opportunities are limitless. A small pallet shack outdoor, a bar in the basement, a club DJ booth or an overgrown garden toolshed. Again: if you consider outdoor use you should ask yourself if it should “stay solid” (and therefore be treated in a weatherproof style) or if it should somehow decay picturesquely over time. I advise to the solid variant, if its not only about some simple seating, and appropriate treatment/varnishing. Even more ideas: for more adventurous children, stuff like that could serve perfectly as the the base for a loft bed.

Pallet shed in the Gran Paradiso

Entrance booth made of pallets in the Gran Paradiso

The same applies for this entrance booth: you can build such a pallet hut indoor and outdoor, and it will find its uses. In this size, a “pallet garden shed” is difficult to style in a kinda cute and cuddly way, so you should consider “un-cuddly” usage, or the efforts for styling in a nice and pretty way could increase significantly.

Pallet table: super chill version with carpet

Finally: a classic that I have never implemented in this style. Pallet beds as well as seating or table furniture can obviously built in a most simple way by just stacking pallets atop of pallets until the desired height is reached. On other pallet furniture pages/collections, i see beds in this style quite often – simply stacked and upholstered pilings of pallets. This is a solid construction method, unlikely to break or even squeak, it can be illuminated from below and looks quite cool then, but nevertheless, despite my really relaxed attitude regarding dust and dirt, i don’t like furniture where i can’t really use broom and/or vacuum cleaner below. This and the lost storage space thats just “filled up with pallets” keeps me from those constructiion variants. But this pallet/carpet table is really, *really* cool and relaxed.

Information about the location. The Gran Paradiso is a post-apocalyptic pub, where LARP (Live Action Role Play) -events take place. Just like the post-apocalyptic PC- and pen&paper-RPGs, but in real life. And with peaceful, reasonable people who have fun together and take care that no one gets hurt. Since maybe it isn’t obvious for people who do not know this scene and its inhabitants: this has neither to do with paramilitary psycho stuff nor with training camps of some rightwing-idiots, its quite the opposite: people who know the difference between a game and anything else very well and definitely prefer the game. And the creation of cool pieces of pallet furniture which can take some good rocking party action.

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Raw material 1: pallet, heavy, requiring treatment

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A kitchen shelf. Preferably in combination with a “workbench wall”, an area where you can hang kitchen utensils and cuterly, that was the plan. Frame conditions: wall space long enough for two pallet widths. Therefore: two pallets wide. Next, the window still should be opened, preferably without cullet. Moreover: a kitchen is a somehow tricky area regarding dust and dirt on the one hand, on the other hand in terms of more steam, grease splashes etc., That said, a more intensive treatment of wood cannot be avoided. And finally: my kitchen – and in particular my work area – illumination is a bit inadequate. Since i enjoy illuminating pallet furniture, thats a no-brainer: i need some lightning under the shelf structures..

Before I started to work on the pallets shown here, I made a few sketch scribblings because I only had a very rough idea of how the whole thing should be constructed. In the end I came to no real result, so off to work. Rapid prototyping/engineering, but it worked out fine. Somehow its really easier to do some basic work (e.g. cutting the format of the “workbench pallets” and holding them agauinst the wall to get an idea how its further processed at best. By the way, it does not lack a certain irony that the heavier of the two pallets used here for clean kitchen furniture was probably one of the most dirty and care-intensive that I ever processed.

Pallet 2: lightweight and in good condition

Basic pallet cleaning, removal of a redundant part

A complete “pallet height” wall-hanged workbench structure would simply become too high or too close to the work surfaces. I had the heavy pallet cutted in the middle between the “pallet legs” (on the protruding pallet part, cuterly will be hanged), the second pallet was cut to plain two “pallet leg width”. Keep all the removed/cut-off parts, you’ll have usage for most of them later. I also removed the center leg part of the heavier pallet for the time being – if only for the sake of cleaning it was a good idea. I planned to relocate it slightly higher later, but in the end he came back to the same place. No fear of resxtructuring -. as long as they’re not varnished yet, pallets are very forgiving regarding dislocations/relocations of pallet parts.

Kitchen shelf pallet: prelinminary dislocations of pallet parts

Both palettes preprocessed and cleaned

In the following, don’t let you irritate by occasionally changing details of the work progress – as i said, this was largely made without a clear plan and therefore, I had finally almost all “pallet leg” parts sometimes removed, relocated or changed the position of the “floor boards” – some of which were, alike with the Pallet wand shelf relocated from the bottom to the front. As usual, with a plan beforehand, the easiest way to work is to go for “maximal needed dislocation”, then have everything cleaned, grinded and varnished (see later), and finally reassemble everything in the wished form. Again, here, it was kind of a “development while processing” method, you save work when the final result is already clearly planned.

First glaze (chalky white): pallet edge, detail

After the usual cleaning and dissecting work, i had the rap material glazed with some water-based wood stain, tint “chalk white”. The aspired effect: visible wood surface under a light/white varnish, with still visible grain, screws, cuts grinding marks. Should look somehow “processed”, but bright and “woody”.

Unnecessary to say, that i also wanted it to look somehow “improvised” and slightly whitewashed. Say that you can have your pallet shelf easily cleaner and more uniform than here, but I like the “rough” look. Note that you simply cannot have an even finish with non-opaque colors on pallet wood. Don’t aim for it or prepare to be frustrated – too often you have completely different wood sorts in the same pallet, differently cutted, varying colors dependend on the direction of the woodcuts, they will remain different under non-opaque colors. Do not even try, or paint opaque, if you want an “uniform” look.

Glazed pallets for the kitchen shelf, front view

Glazed pallets for the kitchen shelf, side view

Here we see the results of the first varnishing. From here, some of the “footboards” were relocated again. But the next step here is the reassembly of the sawed-off part from the lightweight pallet as an upper shelf. The pallet foot was removed (Crowbar! Yeah!) and one of the pallet boards from an surplus pallet leg was mounted into the wide gap between the two existing boards. Fits perfectly.

Assembly: upper shelf space with pallet element and re-bolted pallet boards

Assembly: upper shelf space with additional board, view from above

Beneath the larger top shelf you can see the first “footboard-dislocations” – pried from the bottom (now the front) of the spacers and bolted as a “small” shelf space at the bottom again.

Kitchen shelves from pallets, first test loading with tea sets

Some of the following experiments I had not documented. At this point some smaller intermediate steps are muissing in the photographs. First, I cutted two of the remaining cabinet shelves in half, of which I processed one already as a top workspace of the kitchen cupboard. After cutting, i had them stained and mounted side by side as shelves on the “middle part” of the heavy range. Same goes on two levels of the light range – the window-sided part of the lighter pallet wasn’t equipped with protruding shelves, as they would prevent to open the window without breaking glass.

Pallet racks, hanging, detail shelf bottom

Lower kitchen shelf space – sawed cupboard shelves

Left picture: the stacked shelves attached to the “lightweight” palette. Right: the upper part of the heavy pallet with the pallet shelf. On the lower shelf level of this pallet, the other two halves of cupboard shelf parts are mounted similar to the shelf next to it. All is attached by simply screwing through the board into the narrow sides of the pallet boards underneath. It does the job – but of course you can also work with fittings and angles, if it should become really solid. Recommended if you want to place heavier loads into the rackspace.

Now, illumination (too early: better do the second varnishing first, if you do a second varnishing). Its a clear case that the bottom edge wants lighting behind veneer badly, just like the pallet wand shelf. Fixing the light bulbs there can be quite easy, if you’re lucky with the sockets: those i had at hand were simply mounted with simple screw hooks.

Mounting hack for light bulb sockets: clamping a wooden screw hook

Socket fixed behind veneer on the pallet kitchen shelf

Simply unscrew the plastic cable duct, clamp in a hook, screw back the cable duct until the hook is tightly clamped. Even better: screw the hooks into the wood before you clamp on the socket.

Pallet shelf lighting, detail

Empty kitchen pallet shelf, illuminated

Provides good light on the kitchen workspace and generally does the job. Electrical issues: I have connected all the sockets/lightbulbs parallel. Four lights with eight watt should be no problem. You can use a cable switch, or as its done here, simply use a switchable plug for the power supply. Alternatively, the two range parts could also be cabled “separately switchable”, do this if you want to have turn on the light above the stove but not the sink, but hey, as you like. In the kitchen, I usually either need light (and lots of it) or not.

Pallet kitchen rack, loaded with dishes, lit

Still life with tea cups

This is kind of “test loading” with dishes, because i didn’t apply the clear coating yet. At this point, the chalk white varnih surface was dry, but not yet ready for the second varnishing. This is recommended after 24 hours, and I thought, come on, do it as recommemded. But nevertheless, i wanted to get an image of the result with all the shelves loaded and the cuterly hooks in use. One can hardly resist to get a preview of the end result. Nevertheless, unnecessary to say that i had to clear everything out again and take down the shelves completely, to make the second varnishing. Also recommended: do the cabling/illumination *after* the second varnish.

Pallet rack with clear varnish treatment, detail with light bulbs

Finished pallet kitchen shelf, after second coating

Now, the finalization after taking the whole thiung down obnce more and having a second coating with clear coating. The simple reason for two layers of varnish for a “simple wall colour does it” fethishist like is that we need some more robust surfaces in an environment like a kitchen regarding moisture, steam, grease splatter and other kitchen-typical phenomena. Again i used water-based varnish analogous to the glaze of the pallet garden chair, non-toxic, children- and “saliva-proof” , so i don’t need to worry on what I place the dishes from which i eat.

DIY kitchen shelf from pallets, varnished and in use

Paint/Varnish can be solvent-based or water-based, both are available in “kitchen ready” non-toxic variants, i like water based stuff better. Mostly because its less smelly while drying. One single thing to remember in addition to health considerations would be that stain and clear coating/first and second varnish should be both on the same basis: both either water-based or solvent based.

That’s it – everything is mounted with a total of five dowel pegged wall hooks prodtruding far enough just to hang the pallet board over them. I#m totally hjappy with the result. Shortcuts are described, i obviously had some superfluous tasks and loops while building the “kitchen cupboard alternative”. And finally, I hope that the various “board dislocations” are somehow understandable.

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Pallet Camping Bench at OHM2013, without cushions

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The “Observe Hack Make 2013″, shortened OHM2013 was this year’s Hacker camp in the Netherlands. I was there mostly because of internet- and socio-political reasons and issues and because of my general interest in fine people doing cool stuff with all kinds of electrical/electronical/other equipment, but as it happens, i also observed a quite pretty and very comfortable outdoor couch made of euro pallets there.

Raw material: quite a lot, especially for camping. Six pallets, three of them completely “gutted”, ie, only the surface elements remain, footboards completely removed. The other three with removed middle footboards. I was told this was due to better piling.

At OHM, the hackers tend to make life as comfortable as possible, but the constructors here were the owners of a small mobile shop for all kinds of camp accessories. With this sofa for chillout and relaxing. They had also a pretty iconic bus, and they needed it not only for the offered stuff but also for the somehow weighty furniture. To make the long story short: this sofa is suboptimal for a quick and spontaneous camping session at the weekend.

Pallet bench, backrest, with uncutted nails

Pallet garden bench, supported backrest, OHM2013

The removed pallet footboards are used for easy, fast support of the backrest, flexible useable at uneven terrain. Here its good to see in detail: the footboards were quite hastily loosened with the crowbar (hehe) and then re-used. I would definitely cut off the nails here.

Maybe its on purpose: hanging the laundry on the nails, or having better possibilities to clamp the support boards under the backrests. The kids on OHM2013 should getz along with dangers like those, they also cut vegetables at the childcare place with the laser cutter. Nevertheless, i’d prefer it without the nails, just because of the risk of injury during loading and unloading of the sofa.

Again, the view from the other side. The odds and ends of the pallets can be used as needed as dunnage, when the ground is uneven.

Pallet bench, backrest, protruding nails

Garden bench made of pallets, surplus material at OHM2013

Outdoor pallet bench, upholstered with pillows, OHM2013

Mobile outdoor sofa made from pallets, pillowed – OHM2013

On the last images: the completed outdoor camping sofa made of pallets, with plenty of pillows. Advantages: well placed, it stands solid, even on uneven ground. You can seat and move yourself as convenient as you wich, nothing jiggles.

And it is as comfortable as it looks, in this particular case also certainly stimulating the shop’s business as well as customer interaction and conversation .

Disadvantage: if it gets wet/damp or starts raining, you need to throw the cushions into the bus or at least pull something waterproof over them. But we had hot summer weather and after a short shower it was quickly warm and cuddly again.

Finally, no direct pallet relation here, but it just looked beautiful: OHM2013 at night. Ans a bit more outdoor/camping related: illuminated flower pots are almost as cool as pallet sofas, and significantly easier to transport.

Night impressions, Observe Hack Make, 2013

Night – enlightened by illuminated flower pots, OHM2013

Some more Impressions from OHM2013? As mentioned, nearby I blogged some more articles on OHM2013 with some more visual impressions of a really cool camp.

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Deutsch

Very simple, but charming despite of, or actually because of that: the pallet bench/tablöe combination i saw outside Wuppertals Utopiastadt (“Utopia Town”, link in german), an alternative work/life area in an abandoned railway station. The palette bench is composed with (well, many) plain and simple stacked pallets, so is the table – two pallets of a somehow unfamiliar variety (they remind me of the U.S. pallet with continuous surface planks seen here).

Outdoor pallet bench, uncushioned – Wuppertal, Utopiastadt

Garden bench made of pallets, Wuppertal, Utopiastadt

In detail: I do not know how the pallets are connected to each other. My guess wolud be the useage of long wood screws through an entire pallet into the piece below. Based on the observation that none of the “impriovized skewed screwings” was to be seen. Material: the seven palettes of the lower and middle layer seem to be standard euro pallets throughoutly. The top layer consists of two disposeable pallets, adding up to a total of nine pallets, making the bench quite stable and solid, nevertheless an installation not to be moved esasily after assembly.

Simple pallet bench, outdoor – detail

Plain pallet table of two pallets, detail

The painting/varnishing … well, being quite worn out my guess is that simple wall color was used, being not too robust in outdoor use. I don’t know if it was intended – the worn out look is totally likeable. After all, the “seat pallets” gets covered with cushions before use, so theres no need to worry about paint scaling off. (CDushioning was the case here, too – the pillows were initially stored under an umbrella on the table, the weather did not seem quite reliable when i arrived) .

Pallet bench – seating area with table, outdoor and upholstered with pillows

Simple outdoor pallet table, in use

I like it. Just because its kept relatively simple. Great for outside use and, like here, for the outdoor area of an alternative restaurant. For inside use, it maybe acts to much as a “dust catcher”, one of the reasons i don’t really like the plain “pure pallet stack ” creations indoor, for the said reasons not being able to clean them easily underneath and in between pallets.

If you lack a back wall acting as a bacrest as it is the case here, you can of course mount a pallet sofa backrest as demonstrated here.

Offtopic/not pallet related furniture stuff i need to show off here: they built a book bar inside. Also DIY furniture and sometzhing i really love, combining a love for books with a love for selfmade upcycling furniture, nevertheless, its somehow ambivalent, while books usually should be read.

The book bar in the Utopiastadt

Bar counter made of books, Utopiastadt

Supagolf: Pallet mini golf

Nevertheless, i loved it and the used books looked not too important to me. Besides, some of them were loose (i don’t know if intended or by accident, though).

If you browse the picture galleries of the ceration of Utopiastadt, you can get a glimpse on the creation process of the book bar counter (link in german).

Last offtopic topic: at Utopiastadt, recently the third edition of Supagolf took place: a mini-golf art installation that was aas well like- as playable. I had quite some fun there as shown here (link in german). I did not mention over there that the pinball/airguitar-mini golf track was created with pallets as base structure – in retrospect I am surprised that there were not more pallets used, but I think tzhey used pallets really only on this one from 18 minigolf tracks. Creating – in addition to furniture – also a little art and beauty with pallets, well, it seems like a Good Thing(tm) to me.

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Euro pallet kitchen cabinet. After three days of processing.

Deutsch

In many respects a first. I wasn’t too keen on creating cabinets before, the material and the expected results seemed “too clunky”, somehow inappropriate to me, and given the restrictions of the material, pallet cupboards just werent’t really obvious to me. Now, a cabinet. Furthermore: i guess in all of my posts, sooner or later I talk about how much I prefer one way pallets to Euro pallets – lighter, usually cleaner, simple and easy to work with and most of the time the more “light”, less clunky results. Now a break with these two habits: a cupboard, made from Euro pallets.

Euro pallets, raw material in medium condition

The latter has a background. After moving into the new apartment in Wuppertal it turned out that in the basement still some old Euro pallets were deposited (see also: Where to get pallets?). Precisely, four Euros and two indefinable age-old Disposeables. Owner said he’d dispose them, we said no, he can leave them here, we’ll think of something. This thinking lasted a bit, but here we are. A kitchen cupboard. You can put the coffee atop, you can puit some stuff in, it looks fine and fits perfectly to the pallet kitchen shelf, obviously.

Pallet processing for DIY kitchen cabinet, Scheme

Principle: One pallet, one floor of storage. More precisely, two-thirds of a pallet in double heigth, anything else would be somehow oversized. Thick red line in the diagram: here the entire part was sawed off. The rest was used nearly as a whole, (thin orange border section). Along the green lines the “Footer Boards” were sawn out between the “spacers”. The turquoise edged spacers (4) were levered out later with the crowbar (Yeah! Crowbar!), we well need those later, so they shouldn’t break. That is pretty easy twith “natural wood” spacers, but those from pressboard are sometimes a pain in the butt.

The idea behind: each cupboard floor is “double spacer heigth”. Therefore, we’ll need five spacers per floor (and have only four per pallet plus), but since we need an additional pallet for the footer construction of the cupboard, we even have a reserve of one or two in case if one crumbles while levering off. The plan here is to build the cupboard three compartments high, so I need a total of four pallets.

Crowbar action, done wrong

Crowbar action, done right

My advice: use the cut-off-saw for protruding nails which aren’t removed otherwise, and use it soon. It depends on your workplace, but you can get ugly injuries with those old nails. Never happened here, but i want it to stay so.

Scheme: processed/sawed pallet, ready as a kitchen cabinet rack level

Processed pallet, similar to the scheme

Pallet brand, after first grinding

Cut out the offcuts of the footer boards clean and straight, and keep the offcuts – we’ll need it later, especially the pieces from between the spacers. Those specific specimen looked pretty bad, but once again it was quite interesting to see what came out behind the dirt and the rugged surface. As always: Grind everything – the dirt has to be off, the surface should be smooth, and when you’re lucky, you’ll discover some beautiful grains. Last not least, the rougher your surface, the more paint/varnish/whatever it’ll consume later.

Footnote here: The nicest feature of the euro pallet is definitely the brand sign stuff on the spacer parts. After the first grinding work i was really impressed. There are many (here, we have the railroad companies of germany and france, Deutsche Bahn and SNCF and some business i do not know). Arrange as preferred.

Worktop pallet cabinet 1: move one board

Worktop pallet cabinet 2: Cut spare board

Worktop pallet cupboard 3: Inserting the spare board

But first, we’ll have to start from the top of the cupboard. The cabinet is supposed to have a work surface. We have to – obviously with the best available pallet – remove one of the top boards, place it end-to-end to one of the remaining boards and install an additional one (you should have two surplus boards from the rest of the top pallet) to have a closed surface. You’ll need to cut this additional board into shape.

Now things started to become a bit more complicated. I want *two* spacers stacked for one “cupboard floor”, so that the cabinet compartments are sufficiently high. Also I do not not want to screw everything together somehow with fittings. Plus, i noticed after finishing the first sample cabinet compartment that things are getting somehow heavy.

To kill two birds with one stone: a sort of wooden “plug-in/stacking method” for the various compartments. Next: we also need some side panels. Obviously made with wooden boards (we have some of those), which in turn must be fixed somehow. Last ot least: to fix the additional spacers to each other and to the next pallet cabinet element, one would need *very* long screws, what i’d like to avoid. All in one-solution: you take a piece opf cutoff wood, grind it and cut it the long way through.

Pallet cabinet – two of three elements stacked

Side panel, preliminary

The logs are screwed against the fixed spacer. Second spacer to the log, side panels to the log, too (place them respectively). Here, I’ll need side panels at one side onmly, for the other side goes to the wall. The “connector log” protrudes about one board heigth.

Connector for cabinet base

Connector: still too long

This fits exactly at the rear side of the next pallet element (former “middle part”), because thats at the “standard boards and gaps positions” of the pallets. On the front page it doesnt’t: we’ll have to adjust it. Premiere: Buzzsaw Action! I found this one a few months ago at the flea market, took it “just in case” , and was now quite happy about it, because you can just “sink in” with the saw through the most upper layer of board. Cut out the gap where the “connector log” needs to fit in.

Buzzsaw Action!

Buzzsaw Action!, result

Repeat for all the compartments. On the lowest, the “footer pallet” is screwed simply beyond. The double spacer element in the middle of the front of each cupboard element is fixed with metal fittings (not avoidable here). Since the stability comes later through the stacking and the weight, it just needs to “stay there” ATM.

Connector: fits now.

Next element

And, small digression: the whole thing becomes – thanks to pallet standards – straight and stable. Nevertheless, you have the usual variances, a few millimeters more or less here and there. If your ambition is to have everything really perfect, straight and fitting exactly, you have a lot more work. Most of the time i trust that it fits by and large and the “flair” of the pallet stuff is (imo), that its not as precise and exact as standard furniture. If one element sits wobbly on another, felt pads between the elements/at the stacking points do help. But still, the starting material is an “inexact science”, if you want to do exactly, it could get tiring.

Pallet cabinet, shell, unvarnished

At this point, I started varnishing. With a wax water-based glaze (amazed me that this combination exists). Reason one: it was Sunday and i wanted to continue with some work which doesn’t make too much noise. More technical reason: from this point on, things are assembled, and the more assembled your stuff is, the more difficult it becomes to varnish comfortably.

Varnishing is always a bit of a grab bag. I had nice clean wooden surfaces, which turned out quite rocked after varnishing, others that looked mostly boring and suddenly became beautifully textured, you often don’t really know in advance. As an outlook: later i had some transparent white varnish overall – finished and in place, it looked slightly too dark to us. Matter of taste. Depending on the condition of the pallets, it is generally not a bad idea to varnish twice.

A cupboard door, unprocessed

A cupboard door after some work

Doors. I was quite uncomfortable about making those, since doors should be somehow precise etc., while pallets aren’t. The finished cupboard doors were of course skew, nevertheless, it feels “consistent” – nothing is really precise here, so it adds to the character. Well, mater of taste, i guess. I also had the ambition to use the cuterly, and since the cut-out pieces of wood from the “footer boards” fit excactly into the door gaps, it was a quite obvious plan. Depending on the width of the boards, you’ll need either two or three or two and a half – the length again should fit, nevertheless, you’ll have to adjust every other board a bit.

First door mounted

All doors mounted. To the right: not yet varnished

Hinges: more or less the cheapest stuff from the hardware store – they should do the job. In retrospect, i’m glad: wider hinges would have been more difficult to process, because depending on the positioning, i would have had to attach them to the narrow “board layers” of the pallet frame. Broader hinges would have caused problems here. Neverthelöess, feel free to try a more sophisticated/precise way of doors and door fixations – i’d be curious to see it.There are most certainly more “professional” door solutions here. Besides: yiou can imagine that i had some grinding work here again.

Assemble, varnish the doors, and now for the last details. On the rear side, I attached two fittings per cupboard segment (see the picture), because i thought i should attach the “cupboard stacks” in the end. After it was built up, I didn’t – it simply wasn’t necessary, for everything was tsble in itzself. Nothing wobbles, everything fits, so i kept it “modular”.

Small pallet cabinet: Would do as a small cupboard on itself

Felt pad fetish FTW!

First final version: found too dark

Dissected again. I attached felt pads between every element and to the cupboard feet. Here i noticed that the “three compartment” version does nicely, but one or two elements high also look nice. Maybe another project.

Now on to the final assembly. All three parts off to the kitchen. After the final stacking we found them still a bit too dark. Again, matter of taste (and how it fits to the rest of the interior).

Here, i just grabbed the leftover chalk white/transparent varnish i had from a different project and did another paint job. Afterwards, it was totally OK to me.

Kitchen cabinet front, final

Kitchen pallet cabinet, doors open, final

Pallet cabinet with doorknobs

Odds and ends: maybe the doors get magnets to close. Doorknobs were on the way on time of writing.

Time needed: one long weekend, but without too much work. If you have better pallets to begin with, it should be feasible in two days. Costs: can’t really be estimated on that one, about 30 Euro (ca. 50 Dollars) for hinges, varnish and felt pads, but i had already enough/needed tools, nails, screws and stuff.

Addendum: Door knobs arrived!

Pallet cabinet with doorknobs, Detail

Pallet cabinet and kitchen shelf, with lights

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Deutsch

Three flower stands made from Pallet leftovers

Preliminary notice: i wouldn’t recommend those projects as standalone. Not because the outcomes aren’t pretty, but effort/result may be quesitionable then. My main reasons for building these were

• I wanted to experiment with Tripods and oblique elements and
• i had a lot of leftovers from the kitchen cabinet.

Didn’t want to throw this stuff all away, so i tried some flower stands, one of them useable as a small side table, too.

It all started with the idea to make a tripod, because we have a stool permanently occupied by a palm tree, which we liked to use otherwise. One very faded pallet of quite indefinable kind was also left over, also were a lot more remains of the only partially used euro pallets from the kitchen cabinet. Idea: use the three “base elements” as legs of the tripod, just to have this “pallet-like” structure. Furthermore: cutting the upper parts to unify obliquely at the top that they fit together and can be fixed this way. Came out to be a bad idea, but i had some learnings.

Idea: flower stand, high and three-legged

Tripod legs, sawn pallet elements

Idea

Oh well. I saw some pallet furniture projects looking terrible at the beginning and even in the middle of assembly, coming out fine in the end, so hey, relax. Nevertheless, my significant other considered the draft as too high and otherwise kinda ugly. I disliked the chunky “spacer bits” and did generally not like it, so I thought i should cut them down a bit, it won’t be an error. And who knows, maybe it inspires.

Low tripod: small pallet plant stand

It did. Cutted off tghe footer parts halfway between end and middle spacer and suddenly i had three pieces of pallet cuterly badly demanding to become a small tripod. They just needed some cutting into form.

Sawed-off pallet ends, trimmed

Sawed-off pallet ends, assembled

Looks OK already. Grinding and screw from the bottom with fittings.

Small pallet plant stand, bottom

Small pallet plant stand, top

The principle works, its a bit of bricolage and I suspect that it won’t work stable in larger structures, but in this size, I found it quite charming.

Pallet plant stand, tripod, shell, second attempt

But what now about the rest? OK, forget the thing with the “crooked tripod legs”, take some pallet boards, fit them as a square plate to screw onto the tripod, grind everything and place it onto its legs.

Now the central “spacers” became interesting – until now, they were a bit of an annoyance I just kept for the “pallet style”.

…hmmm…. An intermediate floor! Cut boards to size, grind and fix them!

Pallet table, tripod, painted

Flower stand, tripod, with shelf sawn to form

Higher tripod: Pallet side table

Suddenly everything becomes stable and looks as if i had a plan on from the start. With this result I was also quite pleased.

Bits and pieces yet – the inevitable felt pad bottom-glides, paint/varnish (I used up my residual water/wax stain from the kitchen cabinet up to the last drip) and the result also does its job as a sofa side table.

Medium sized stool: flower stand from residual pallet boards, medieval version

Now i still had a number of pallet board leftovers, and a small and large flower stand makes a medium sized one somehow mandatory. “Base elements” were out, so we only have standard boards. Means: you can also make this one from simple wood boards.

Mark foot sections for the stool crosswise

Surface, sawed boards and cutted-off nails

Residual pallet material. Vulgo: boards.

…I guess i had these medieval market plug-in deck chairs in the back of my head. But as a flower stand, the item didn’t need to become this very sound and stable. Cut both boards straight halfway through, in a diagonal saw angle.

Both jigsaws I use can be adjusted the way shown here, i guess its kind of a standard. I think five degrees more or less don’t matter, but be warned, i needed some stabilizing screrwing adfterwards and am not as happy with this one vompared to the other two flower stands in poinmts of stability.

Stool, mostly assembled and with stabilized footer elements

Jigsaw, ankled use

As you can see: i just used some leftovers pieces of wood, screwed directly through the edges, nothing wobbles.

TZhe whole stool would be stable enough for some flower pots without these, too, but hey, it’s a small piece of furniture not to be dissected again, so have it stable.

As always: sanding before, painting/varnishing after final assembly.

Wooden stool, felt pad assembly

Medium stand for flowers, water/wax varnished

After final assembly: some details grinded

…oh well. What has three legs stands stable, what has four (or something square-formed as this board angle stuff here, must be clean straight, or it wobbles.

I must admit, after some afterwork i called it a day and said, good enough for me.

Final installation: high pallet plant stand

Trilogy of pallet flower stands

Conclusion

Once again, no clear costs/material information – you don’t buy stuff extra for small projects like these, you realize them because you have the leftovers from the other projects. More the “do i really have to throw away all that stuff?” and then don’t – build something instead

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Deutsch

Pallet side cabinet, linseed oil, with photo frame glass panes

Sauna is a wonderful thing. It disrupts deep relaxation though, when you see there large beautiful wooden side cabinet lanterns and get the thought “Oh, can we build something like that?”. Since we were in the sauna, i had no chance of taking a picture of my template/inspiration, but the result should be approximately 90 cm in height, about 30 × 30 cm wide/deep and resulting in an intermediate of lantern and side cabinet. Glass protecting the candles atop, oiled wood cabinet below and of course a place to store candles in inside.

We’ll need (nearly) two pallets, mainly for the need of long (90cm+) boards. From one single pallet you don’t get enough 90 cm boards for the side panels / doors, and moreover, the leftovers are to schort for the also needed 30 cm-parts for intermediate floors and framing. Particularly nasty: the “standard blends” that you get when sawing at the spacers, are always about 22-26cm in length, whats really annoying if you noticing after cutting these – you get longer parts after dissecting the pallet parts completely. Learning curve.

Pallet, middle foot removed

After this one, i’ll definitely try another construction method. I think here I worked in a kinda wrong direction from the beginning. So check out the “aqlternate version, too. (Update: second version here!) The Plan for next time:

• · Cut four pallet spacers with the jigsaw as glass holders, place glass plates in the cuts for solid/straight placement
• · use these four pallet spacers as the form factor for the wind light, build the panels around these and
• · not vice versa – because it is quite a matter of luck that everything fits reasonably.

Alike other projects: remove the mid-foot, remove nails (here more for safety reasons) right afterwards, here, we’ll need the right and left sections, not the middle part later. The leftovers can be used later for patches in the side panels. Remaining: two pallet parts off with one pallet foot each. The footboards later serve as supports for the shelves. Width is just over 30 cm – relevant here the inner width, because I want to place four glass plates. The cheap solution are frameless clip photo frames: Standard DIN A 3, 29.7 to 42 cm. We have a little gap on the edge, but we also know that pallets are not an exact science.

Halved pallet for windlight cabinet

Lantern/side cabinet pallet, completely dismantled

The tasks now:

• · Shorten board to 90 cm.
• · remove the footer board
• · remove the middle board, since we want the boards being completely closed/next to each other. INsert the removed board without spacing, measure the width of the gap, cut an additional board of appropriate width, fix it.

Lantern/Pallet cabinet, walls on two sides

Cabinet side panel, fully enclosed,

In which order? I’ve been shortening beforehand, removed the boards afterwards. A bit less leveraging.

Repeat the same process for the second side wall. Thats about as far you can get with one pallet, and if you have some 30cm-pieces, you can start fixing the pieces together now. Alternatively, start dissecting the second pallet or use leftovers – i should have enough, one would think, but i built too much flower stands lately.

Pallet side cabinet: lower bottom

So far so good. As always: remember to grind/polish in maximum decomposition state.

“Shelves”. Here, I believe that I overplayed the “will fit somehow”-principle. I need a 30 × 30 floor inside, so I took some 30cm-boards, fixed them from underneath to each other, and after noticing the three pieces add up to only 28cm, i cutted down the sidebar on the one side down, using the other one as fill-uüp for another 1,5 cm and go for it. quite the same issues above: everything became slightly crooked and I was very glad when after all sides were fixed, i managed to get the “overall stability” and also straighten things again (mostly). Anyway, i should not rely on this “will get straight somehow” in the future, its simply risky and you just don’t know beforehands.

Wind light: upper shelf, suitable for A3 picture frame width

Wind light, cabinet doors

Supreme shelf, glass plate stand

One can do better and more precise, i have to admit. Yet, i leaerned a lot for some projects to come See above, learning curve: the next time i’ll do it the other way round; from an exactly built internal glass plate stand to the outside.

At this point I started using another pallet: i needed more of the long (90cm) panels. Generally, it was a bit of patchwork at this point, I wanted a nice front door with a bit more “rough” front panels, but then I had only some more 90cm-panels from some cheap dispoable pallet i used for the back panels. They don’t look as good, but they won’t be looked at doo often.

Wind light, with top bezel fixed

Glass holder, securing metal angle

Wind light, shelf and doors

Now, varnishing. Once again quite an “Oops” when you see the change in wood coloring after the oil finish. Yep, my first pure linseed oil treatment. I got this tip at a pallet construction workshop recently (story follows). Pure natural product, easy to process, the grain looks great and for indoor use its a nobrainer. For outdoor, regular aftertreatment would be required, for the oil finish isn’t throughoutly weather resistant. Only drawback: it has a distict smell, which one should like or, at least, tolerate. It vanishes over time, but not completely. But … whoa, these are colours coming out of simple pallet wood, treated with colorless linseed oil.

Pallet wood, linseed oil treatment: Front door, first half

Wind light, completely varnished with linseed oil

The last picture shows the A3 glass panes for which I simply used the glass from EUR 4.50-cheap picture frames from the hardware store.

To make the long story short: placing the finished sideboard in place, i slipped a bit and crashed three of the four glass panels.

Subsequently, the store had run out of A3 sized picture frames and I had to switch to A4 landscape format. Nice, but not as intended.

Done for now – with A4 sheets of glass

Gaffatape fixes the world

The Gaffa needs not to fix/hold anything, its just keeping the marble granulate from falling into crevices and into the cupboard interior. The glass part becomes a bit “short” for my taste, being covered by wood for quite some centimeters. Again, I plan the second attempt with sawed slots in pallet spacers (with branding!).

Now, crushed marble granulate. Cheap in the gardening section of the hardware store. And the final details, then it looks like this:

Wind light, with marble granulate padding

Wind light, finished, open

Wind light, finished, closed

Again a case of “Would have made it completely different after making it”, but anyway: I like it, even if one – as often already – wouldn’t have expected it while some phases of the construction. Again: check out the second attempt.

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Pallet lanterns, side cabinets, Version 1 and 2 (right)

Deutsch

As announced: the first small pallet wind light/cabinet caused some “hm, try different next time”-thoughts, and so I tried different. Just got three pallets from a friend, so why not try an alternate version directly afterwards? This time directly planned a bit smaller and with A4-sized glass panels – the A3-panels for version 1 are now replaced, after i broke them doing the last neccessary tasks. Material needed: besides the glass, exactly one Euro pallet should do it.

We need four spacers for the upper part. Arrange them as seen to form a square in total. Connect from below with correspondingly sawn pallet boards. Distance to the margin of the spacers: obe panel thick – so we can attach the cabinet sidewalls. Reminder: I built the first version “inward from the side walls”, and was very unhappy with the typical inexactitude of the material. The strategy to build outward from a cleanly made square cover seems therefore better, more straight and solid. The price you pay: it is now one of those “pallet projects” where really only the individual elements have “pallet style”, for the raw material, the pallet, gets dissected completely. Virtually no piece of wood here is in the initial state of the pallet to each other. More work, less “pallet style”, but a quite clean look and a solid construction.

Take measurements: upper part made of spacers

Fixed upper part, penciled cutting lines

Since we use its glass panel, you can use the back of the cheap A4 photo frame to draw the slots for the glass (and to check directly after sawing for the correct fit – but be careful, the glass is usually slightly thinner). I took it a bit more easy and just completely cutted from one end to the other with the circular saw, three centimeters cutting depth. The cuts have to create an “inner square” of 24,7cm, the short side of an A4 rectangle.

Wind light top, glass panel test

Footboard, Shell made by sawed spacers

Footer and top parts of the pallet cabinet

Four out of six narrow spacers consumed, remain two and three “fat” ones from the middle row. The latter had to be adjusted a bit, since they would protrude otherwise. The result is arranged here together with the top part only for the aesthetics of the photo :). The panels are simply pallet planks cutted to 30cm each, forming the needed square. Beautiful brandings to the front And as always – sanding when the maximum state of dissection is reached. Here, i mostly practised a continuous “lever – saw – sand”-triathlon for each part dissected and fixed to the resultung cabinet.

After all “exact science”, the following got improvised a bit. Sidewalls are 60 cm – for the simple reason that a standard Euro pallet board has 120 and cutted in halves, i get exactly two per board and enough for the whole thing. So prepare your sidewall boards. Sometimes you’re lucky and have a fairly accurate 15cm-board width, then you have one board, one sidewall. Most of the time, you’ll have widths of 12 or 13 cm, then you need three and cut them to the size to fit.

Pallet cabinet, two side walls, from inside

Pallet cabinet, two side walls, from outside

Pallet cabinet, two side walls, footer on top

I simply screwed the side walls on the upside-down top part. I placed a pallet bank edgewise on it for exact-upwards/rectangular placement of the side walls. When two sidewalls are fixed, you can fix the lid on it and also fix the third wall. Cabinet doors follow later.

Wind light, glass test placement

Pallet Lantern, wall 3 work in progress

Looks straight. In any case, better than the improvised work of the first attempt. Now, the third sidewall after which i ran out of the easy-to-build-with-boards with 15cm width. For the front (well, front doors) i need three boards.

I actually liked the 1/3-2/3-ratio of the doors of the first attempt. So, same here. Look for matching boards, cut to size, sand, screw two of them with fittings or wood. Attach hinges, fix doors to the cabinet walls.
Now, we start with the last details. Again, i want crushed marble in the candle frame, so we have to close the gaps between the upper spacers/glass sockets. Just saw out matching wood pieces and assemble.

Cabinet doors, preparatory work

Wind light, first door fixed

Wind light, side fairing

Here I used two metal angles of unknown origin, anything will do here, snice it gets covered later. Something for the learning curve: working *small* pieces of wood with the belt sander should be done carefully, otherwise you can get quite stupid injuries (like i did here). Could have been worse, something between bruise and scrape, not severe, but it hurts and is primarily stupid and avoidable.

Addendum to the doors: I’ve got the hinges fixed in a manner probably not intended. The spare place for the screwball was on the other side, butr i wanted the angles to protrude as seen in the result here. Don’t ask, I liked it that way and understand perfectly well when someone likes it different. Go as you like

Hinge, unorthodox usage

Linseed oil varnish, first half

Linseed varnishing, complete

Alike the first attempt: linseed oil finish. Have everything cleaned from dust/sanding bweforehand and be surprised by the wood colours coming out while varnishing.

The rest: alike the first attempt, only easier. Plug the glass panes into the sawed slots. I hadn’t even to consider whether/how to duct the cleavages, since everything fits close and tight enough so the marble split does not slip through.

Details: Felt pads underneath (as usual), some improvising with magnets to close doors “firmly”. Of course, you can add shelves/floors as needed. I’m really pleased. Its a bit smaller than the first attempt, but i actually like it better. Final decoration was not made by me, my girlfriend has surely the better taste here

Pallet side cabinet finished, open

Pallet lanterns, decorated and open

Pallet lanterns, decorated and illuminated

Final Note: As they are shown here, the cabinets are definitely not at all childproof. They don’t fall over easily, but the glass panels are really unsafe, thin and easy to break. If there are children around, this stuff should be avoided, replaced by plastic or a different, not likely to break-material. Picture frame glass panels are definitely not an option then.

The post Side cabinet, Wind Light made of Pallets: second attempt appeared first on Pallet Furniture.

Coffee table made of Euro pallets, nearly finished

Deutsch

The Ikea side table was not what i really wanted for some pen&paper role-playing by the fireplace, something bigger and more appropriate was needed, and I was inspired by a “floating pallet coffee table” i saw somewhere on the net and thought, the dfirection is right.

A wrong direction would have been these “pallet, glass plate atop, rollers underneath” stuff which is seen often. I’d like something “pallet only” For that. Next: I want drawers! Therefore, again a warning: the result may look nice, but you don’t actually see all the work invested. Drawers are a real pain in the ass. Without drawers, its definitely easier to build, but hey, it’s cool and a challenge.

Requirements: three euro pallets, one of which is totally dissected throughout the process (mostly for drawers). One as the tabletop, one (partially) as base element. Next: I wanted the table only “one pallet height” high, otherwise it seemed “too thick” and the drawers would have been difficult to build and most likely look quite clumsy.

The tabletop

Here we go.

Tabletop pallet, preparations and first breakage

Bottom part pallet, detached footboards

Tabletop, first boards taken from the bottom pallet inserted and sanded

I want the table top without gaps. The boards on the spacers were heavily nailed, i couldn’t dissect them without major damage. So i took out the two “intermediade boards” and closed the first major gap with these. Well. With the “footboards” of the bottom pallet the rest will be ok, those were easier to dissect. Recommended: avoid damaged boards while disassembling, you’re glad about any good piece of wood later for the drawers.

Pallet tabletop, preliminary completed

Pallet tabletop, detail, cut-to-fit inlay board

Sand everything, fill up the two gaps. The first board is easy, the second needs to be sawn to fit, and at the second gap, I had some artistic cutting because of a knothole.

Turn over the tabletop pallet. Here (and later) i needed the circular saw. Background: the footboards were massively nailed/fixed to the pallet, i wasn’t able to loosen them without breakage, but I need (shorter, but unbroken) boards for drawers (especially their fronts) with a little more length than the gaps between the spacers.

Cutting boards for drawers – bottom of the tabletop pallet

Sawed boards, wood residues on the spacers

Therefore i saw the boards with the circular saw, right cut depth just reaching the spacers, and ideally cutted right next to the first nail (you remove the wood remnants easier then, moreover you get longer boards, which are more flexible in latter use). You’ll need good “drawer material” later and here it is. Wood remnants are easily removed with the crowbar, nails via cutoff-saw. Afterwards. i put the bottom pallet atop the spacers for testing the look and proportions: fine. Remove the leftover center spacers. Combine, this time the upper part up.

Pallet coffee table, shell

Coffee table shell, residues removed, tabletop now on top

Note: the spacers are fixed at the “table top pallet”, the lower pallet consists only of the boards, without any pallet feet/spacers anymore.

The drawer slides

The plan: make the drawer floor almost as wide as the gaps between the planks connecting the boards of the lower pallet. The drawers themselves are again significantly more narrow than the gaps between the spacers. The supernatant drawer bottom acts as a “guide rail”, above which are “guide boards”. I build This slightly too high in the first attempt – make the drawer sides a centimetre lower than the space to the tabletop and avoid additional corrections afterwards. Generally – leave a bit more space then you think you need. At least i did it this way here and with every drawer later (i built quite some) and its a lot of work without correcting afterwards, too.
First “guidance board” mounted on the left, some more (with some recycled broken panels) right.

Tabletop pallet with wood scraps on spacers, below

Drawer guide boards, all parts sanded

This is the beginning of a lot of sawing and sanding. Saw all “guide boards” into fit (as told, have them a little less high than I have them here), sand, assemble. In the frontal view onto the “folded-shut” table you can see where we’re heading. I had the vague hope that the emerging “small side niches” would also look nice, but in the end you don’t see the rear walls at the finished object.

Drawers guidance boards, mounted

Drawer hole on the pallet table side, front view

Drawers

Floor: as available, i used two of the “broader” pallet boards and one of the narrow kind. For side and rear panels you’ll have to take whats there, the more broad pieces you can use for floors, the betterr 8and the less construction efforts). The front gets important again: I liked best the “sawn out footboard parts” because of their carvings on the edges. Moreover, they were quite likely to come out as very beautiful wood, once sanded and oiled.

Drawer bottom, measured, before sanding

Drawer assembly in the drawer slide

The first drawer. Cut the Floorboards to a width leaving a centimeter space at both sides to the “bottom pallet guidances”. Sand, assemble the sideboards (I made this in the later drawer hole with guidance boards as an assembly help for easier work, see the picture below). Also cut/grind/attach the front board.

Drawer and insufficient raw material

I am the wrath of God.

Then i inserted the first finished drawer and noticed how laborious the following three additional drawers will become. Took a deep breath and noticed that i’d run out of wood in any case. That was the moment I completely dissected another pallet.

Nail boards. Something hard to pull everything out

Sufficient amounbts of drawer material

Some of the “beautiful boards” of the disassembled pallet were quite a feat. A tip to avoid broken boards – besides cautious levering with the crowbar don’t rermove the boards from the spacers, but the spacers from the boards. I nmanaged to get even heavily nailed stuff loose without broken wood. A perceived kilos nails sawn off with the cut-off-saw, prepared correctly sized panels, and arranged them in the “drawer-scheme”. Seems we have enough material now.

Assembly aid for pallet table drawers

On sanding multiple boards

Here you see the “installation aid” with the drawer slide. Put the sidewalls in, lay the floorboards on top, fix them with screws, turn around, cut back- and front-panels to size, sand, attach. I eventually switched to a “multiple panel sanding” strategy of a bunch of pre-cut boards, inserted into the pallet boards for fixation and being a bit quicker than otherwise.

Finished drawers in an open pallet coffee table

Finished drawers in a closed pallet table

The end result, once open, once closed shut. Recommended: mark every drawer and its indivuidual position at top and bottom table part. Whats mounted in the “docking bay” front-right won’t possibly fit as well left-front.

Glazing/Linseed oil varnish and coffee table wheels

Pallet table, tabletop, partially varnished

With the pallet lanterns/windlights I switched to linseed oil finish, here alike. As usual, the wood changes its character completely during the varnishing. Once you see the tabletop varnished/unvarnished, then the complete tabletop varnished. Note: i grinded with about 80, max. 120 grain sand paper, better use a finer grain for finishing of the sanding part – 180 makes a huge difference in the varnished result which you won’t notice really before varnishing.

Coffee table, varnished, open drawer

Elevated pallet table, wheel and additional foot element

Another “i should have known better”-moment: I brought four small furniture wheels from the hardware store, mounted them before glazing and after finally assembling the whole thing, the result was too low.

Pallet table, complete linseed oil finish

Pallet table, finished

Since I did not want to dismantle the entire table again, I improvised with four spacers I attached to protruding wood pieces, attached the wheels to the spacers and again the spacers through the protruding wood parts below the bottom part of the table. This is obviously suboptimal – it would have been nicer to disassemble the table again, attach the spacers with screws from the inside through the board and attach the wheels afterwards. On the other hand, you can’t actually see this improvisation unless you lie down on the floor. So, everything’s fine.

… Except that the result, despite all the sawing and grinding is nearly two pallets heavy – even without the drawers – and needs to be dragged out of the cellar now. But the result is quite conciliatory.

Conclusion

Fine, I like it. Heavy and solid, but still easy to roll. Time needed: about three working days, I think – what is quite much and you don’t actually see it in the finished piece, since drawers and their guide boards are the most elaborate parts and the details are simply not visible. You should definitely have a good belt sander for this, otherwise you’ll go mad. For a first pallet project its oversized. But if you are looking for a smaller challenge – here you go.

Last todos: We were undecided whether we use normal handles on the drawers or perhaps simply drill two holes and make a loop of thick hemp rope. The latter was the style of choice.

Pallet table, with handles on the drawers

Used a 14mm drill on the drawers. Two holes in the drawers, end of the rope from the front in, pull through a fair bit and make a knot. Same with the other end, make the loop tight. With some security overhead, cut the rope and knot the other end on the drawer inside. Repeat x3.
I repeat myself, but it looks fine to me. One can still elaborate with metal mounts round the rope holes, but I doubt that it would be cool, and on the linseed oil-treated wood pure rope looks fine and fixations won’t hold with glue. But do as you like

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Tealight candle holder, from pallet wood, lit

Deutsch

My dearest bought some cool looking tealight hanging glasses and had the idea to build a kind of hanging table chandelier. On the last euro pallet we had a pretty birdlike brandmark, and since the “pallet candelabra” was to hang over the dining table, some more precise and clean work and especially finer sanding was needed, I did not bother the quite rugged look of the raw material, though, what was a good thing: newer wood tends to splinter, and i have the feeling that the older pallets often have the cooler textures.

A new “varnish” test also: liquid beeswax. Should come out brighter than linseed oil, it did, and smells great. But I get ahead of the actual work.

Beautiful pallet firemark for the tea light chandelier, untreated

Pallet material for a tea light candle holder

When you take one of the broad boards, you can place the spacers transversely with the branding sign outward. I wondered about spacers lengthwise and using a narrow board, but it seemed to me somehow unbalanced. Lever out the broad panel of your choice, pry off two fine spacers, sand everything (and be cautious not to grind the branding signs off). The board doesn’t need to be entirely “straight”, I even sawed off some edges with ugly, splintered or otherwise unwanted looks. Main point: have it sanded fair and smooth. I liked the result.

Branding, sanded carefully

Pallet board, sawed and sanded

Some easy sanding, compared with larger projects. Nevertheless, here for the first time i worked with coarser and finer sanding paper, down to about 120 grain (180 would have been even better and is recommended for “fairer” studff like this). With a wax finish which tends to emphasize scratches and a somehow exposed position of the finished work, I wanted smooth wood and no scratches, joints whatever

Then: spacers crosswise to the board ends.

Tea light candelier, board and spacers assembled

Pallet finetuning in backlight

Cleaned result- I used a simple paint brush to cleanm the wood and get the remaining dust out of joints. Now mark the holes for the suspensions. I had penciled the “top” of the board, in retrospect, I noticed, marking on the borrom would have been smarter, but both ways have advantages and disadvantages.

Mark holes for the tea light holders

Tealight holder holes, drilled

Here my electric drill joined the choir invisible. He was a brave thing and drilled and screwed under sometimes really heavy conditions and difficult circumstances, and it was a new experience to me to learn how thick the smoke can get out of such a small machine when it finally bites the dust. A Brief moment of silence.

I only worked with a cup drill (recommended), which seems to have tilted, i think this was the reason for the final machine breakdown. Afterwards, i used a 55 mm knothole drill(?) (center bit?), but that creates a “big hole” instead of a round cutting.

Tealight holes, finishing details

The problem while drilling “top-down” – when you drill through, the wood splinters. You also have less space underneath (well, depending on where you drill, i simply pu a pallet below the workpiece)

I liked the “splintering” though, since it drove me to some additional sanding and, as a result, nice curved edges and structures.

If everything is drilled and sanded clean, on to the beewax varnish. In the case of this finish: have your wood exactly as you want it: you have no chance in additional grinding/sanding with a waxed wood surface. I sanded some linseed treated wood, its no fun, but its possible. Same with wax: you just wax your sand paper and there goes the grinding effect.

Liquid beeswax glaze, varnishing halfway through

Beewax glaze, before and after varnishing, detail

Definitely brighter wood compared to the linseed oil varnish. I love it. In case you compare projects here directly: take into account that i sanded here finer than the “linseed projects” and the wood sorts differ quitze heavily from time to time.

First test configuration with tealight holders

Tealight glasses, suspension, detail

I’m sorry, i don’t know where the glasses are available online. We found them in Wuppertal in a small shop, let me know if someone finds an online source.

And now up in the air. Two hooks drilled into each of the spacers (so you can adjust the result easier than with one suspension point only), use as suspension what you like. We had chosen steel wire.

Tealight candle holder, hung

Water level comes in handy

Level the candelaber in all directions. The steel wire suspension I fixed with screw clamps, you can easily adjust the length right and left to achieve straight hanging.

Tealight candle chandelier, hung

Pallet luster, lit

Yep. Thats it. So what about the material consumption and effort? A pallet (hehe), more precise: about a quarter of it. The tealight holder glasses, beeswax glaze, steel wire and four screw clamps, screw hooks, a few sheets of sandpaper and a new electric drill. As said before, cup drill recommended, center bits are overkill – they just were around since i had some other tealight project. Time: one afternoon, definitely not more, but take your time for really clean sanding.

Tea light candle, lit, detail in backlight

Hanging pallet candle holder, lit from above

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Bathroom cabinet made of pallet timber, finished, detail

Deutsch

An experiment, and to be honest, against some kind of “pallet philosophy”: made with completely disassembled pallet wood. I always lack the “real pallet-like” feeling. The background here: the dimensions are given, you can not build a cabinet a half pallet size wide because it will be significantly too narrow (otherwise: too wide) for under the sink.

Considerations: the space beyond our washbasin is quite “standard”, 60 cm wide, 60 high, 40 deep. The usage of “standard pallet parts” won’t work since a typical “half pallet” cutted at the central support will become like 50 deep and 70 wide. Therefore: complete dissection and building from scratch. Since I had some spacers left my first considerations went analogous to the kitchen cabinet: “stacked branding signs”, so to speak.

Bathroom cabinet: concept considerations

Pallet cabinet: baseplate completed

“Stacked brandings” looked uncool, whether vertically or horizontally. Made a shaky impression and would use a lot of screwing/fixing parts “over the corners”, finally, it uses up space without really looking convincing. So, instead, four spacers to the front and some cutouts at the front doors to show off the brandings. That was the plan, and before working it out in detail, first the bottom panels and some footboards.

Cabinet floor, with cut edges for side boards

Bottom plate with the lower corner pieces, already linseed oil-stained

Thoughts while construction: the upper boards of the bottom plate were cut/short at the edges – the gap will be used to put the vertical side boards in. Next: a) sand everything here (reached maximum dissection state) and b) glaze with linseed oil. The piece of furniture will be placed in the bathroom, where it is moist/humid, and I want the wood oiled everywhere, not to have some damp or even moldy edges in a year from now. FYI. it’s about half a year in the bathroom now, everything still looks perfect.

Its my first test case for linseed oiled furniture in a damp environment, so far it looks good.

Cabinet-top, bolted from below

Bathroom cabinet, upper cabinet board

The bottom plate is fixed with footboards. On the top plate, I did not want these, the single boards just needed to be attached in a sufficiently solid way, even with the cutted holes for drain and water supply. Therefore: corner pieces/spacers, two light wood slats and two metal fittings in places that needed some extra fixation.

Assembly of the first side wall

The side wall. The foremost boards have cutouts at the top and the bottom, so the brandings of the spacers in the cabinet corners are visible. This was made mostly by rule of thumb – its helpful to measure exactly, but as long as there are no gaps, a centimeter more or less does not matter.

Nevertheless, I occasionally hate my affection to build stuff sometimes “just somehow”. Nevertheless, if you want that water levelö proof, you’d have to cut, saw, work much more exact. Funny enough, until now, it worked out my way as well. I don’t know exactly, is it luck, or just the flexible material “pulling straight” in the final assembly, or just some routine, that i learned to work simply cleaner/more exact just “out of the hand, probably a bit of everything. Here the goal wasn’t a shut tight cabinet either – its in the bathroom and i like the thought that there are no unvented corners.

Side walls and the upper plate, fully assembled

Pallet cabinet shell, front, top, walls straight

Doors – right sanded/glazed, left the raw boards

When the frame is up and everything is straight in its place, the rest will be simple.

You lay the “door boards” atol the front opening, pencil the lines where you cut the surplus wood off, cut, sand, varnish and assemble the boards for each of the two doors. I simply attached them from the inner side with some leftover slats.

MIssing after the first final assembly: door handles. Until now – just didn’tz see something what loked like “hay, thats it”, and its fine without them. Later attached: Magnets, in order to have the doors really closed.

Bathroom cabinet, half open

Pallet wood cabinet, open

Requirements: I guess I have used here about one single Euro pallet – it’s a little hard to say, because I have also some spare wood residuals from old projects. But you should be OK with one pallet. And a slightly longer afternoon, where once again the sanding is/was the main work. Later: some cupboard door magnets, “angeled” – you need to screw the magnets as well as the metal plates they attach to, its nearly impossible to glue on oiled wood

Bathroom cabinet from pallets – Completion

Bathroom furniture made of pallets: It works.

Impression afterwards: i Like it. How the linseed oil / wood will withstand the bathroom environment, time will tell. Half a year later it still tells “OK”.

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Palette dresser with bark beetle tracked wood and LED lighting

Deutsch

Slightly bigger project, with a background story. And some “non-pallet-material”. It all started with my dearest wanting to make some rustic forest work pictures. More precisely, we wanted some cool looking wood for tealight holders. Looking around in the forest, we found a great-looking, bark-beetle gnawed small tree. Beetles/larvae all gone, so we sawed our parts off. And there, we remembered that we would need a dresser for the bedroom and some elvish/wooden looks would be nice. One thing led to another.

Why not take such a gnawed tree branches as a table leg, or somehow as “table structure” for attached lights, we had some rough considerations of that kind, and so the wood excursionbecame the prequel to the dressing table as the next project. In any case, an entirely new form of procurement of materials, beyond the usual “where to get pallets”.

We brought some beautiful pieces of bark-beetle grawes wood, I cut some as a test for its looks, had it sanded a bit to see how the aisles and the wood would look like, and it looked fine. Fine.

Here, a dressing table is made

Bark beetle wood pattern, gnawed larval aisles

Regarding bark beetles, we checked Wikipedia and I had to laugh a lot, since they point out the economical problems of bark beetles; gnawed wood results in a significant loss in value. Of course its a grave issue if you have this kind of vermin in a forest, but we were absolutely thrilled by the great textured wood and thios information was quite in contrast to our excitement. Nevertheless: they go for living wood, our branches weren’t inhabited any more. I checked regularly also after varnishing/building, looks we’re perefectly safe. Note here: i don’t know the different wood vermins and can’t give general advice here. We found the branches in a quite well worked forest, so i strongly assume if they were still infectuous/inhabited, the wood workers wouldn’t have them kept lying around in the forest after cutting the stuff down.

Back to the classic raw material. Some of the readers will be familiar with some of my standard procedures, so I will be brief here, on issues like build a “closed table surface”, for example.

Pallet raw material, well known

Dresser table surface, rearranged boards

Material requirements: two pallets minimum You need quite some wood/boards for he drawers, and if you don’t use branches as table legs, you’ll need material for that, too. The plan was to build drawers (like the pallet coffee table) and a narrow cabinet (similar to the bathroom-cabinet). The “Second leg”, the rest of the substructure? Here I thought about the thick log part of the tree we brought. Hm, yes, that’s it.

Dresser, structural plannings 1

Dresser, structural plannings 2

Therefore, we start with the “cabinet part”. In the same height, we’ll cut the log later and use it as a table leg.

Frame for the cabinet

Dresser, partly built – the table surface lays already stable

Since we’re at it, you might as well make the guide rails for the drawers.

Drawer guide boards

First cabinet side wall, detail

At the side wall, i had once again the “pallet effect”: it’s not an exact science, I sawed everything straight, but well, something always comes out warped. I cutted a narrow wedge for the gap i had after assembling the boards. First, I fixed the side walls with metal fittings, but then I liked a “plain wooden” solution better with employed counterparts down and up at the top and bottom pallet element better. You see it below in “…and pallet drawer number 2” on the footboard / inside the cabinet.

Cabinet side wall 2 and guide rail

Drawers, before processing

Building drawers is terrible. An eternal sanding and sawing, and you have the feeling you don’t make progress at all. I made the second cabinet wall first, but then it had to be drawers. First one, then the other. This time I had sanded everything much finer than the coffee table, but if you really want to avoid any scratches from sanding, you have probably at least use sandpaper with 180-grit to finish (I had used 120 max.) Annoying: some woods you just don’t get smooth, and at some one thinks that it is smooth now, and you see scratches again as soon as you varnish. My luck, that i actually like the slicghtly rocked/shabby looks.

Drawer number one…

…and pallet drawer number 2

Note to number one: I had taken one of the coffee table drawers as a pattern. It was pretty blown away how drastic the effect of linseed oil vs. untreated/sanded is.

Now things become exciting. I wanted to use one of the thinner branch pieces as a “superstructure” next to the wall mirror above the table. I drilled a 40mm hole in the table, and then sharpened the branch end fit. At first I thought I need fixture from below, but it will not budge simply plugged into (and this way, it can be carried separately).

LED tree branch, in construction

LED holes in the tree branch

The holes I drilled with 16mm, I had ordered a set of 10 LEDs with 15mm mounting diameter in advance, 10 × 0,07W warm white. Amazon reviews say that they are OK, on other platforms i saw a few disgruntled customers with negative “PSU broken” comments and promptly got a set with a broken power supply. No electricity for you, kid.

Table foot mountingTable leg mounting

Nearly finished pallet dresser: branch/stem assembly

Waxing branches

Short thought if i should be annoyed, but before, i just constructed everything related to drilling. A remaining connection pin of a doorknob became a dowel. Then the whole bark beetle branch was sanded again, cleaned (a dry paint brush comes in handy) and finally, the entire project was treated with liquid beeswax.

Guarantee/Service departments sure do love me. I cutted the plug of an old unused 12V power supply (i have some PSU lying around). held the wires to one of the LED’s contacts, which lit up. Well, use warranty and have to wait anothjer week? Rhetorical question.

Of course i used the old PSU i had around and cutted all the plugs from the LEDs. They wouldn’t have fit through the drilled holes anyway, or you would have to drill quite large holes. I drilled 16mm where the LED was to be placed, deep enough to fit the LED in. From the othjer side i drilled with 8mm to the back or the side of the “LED-Hole”, to connect the wires through. Stick the Cable into the LED hole, pull it through/out the cable hole untilö the LED is fixed. Pulling through with some wire helps.

LED installation, soldering of the power supply

LED installation/soldering, finished

Power: I had simply soldered everything open and uninsulated. These are 0.03W LEDs, there is no noteworthy power on the wire. You can of course also consider a nice insulation and some installation on/into the wood, myself, i like the looks of wiring. And solder joints, yeah.

Odds and ends: alikethe coffee table, i used hemp rope as handles for the drawers. Have everything polished a bit. Carry all parts out of the basement (and therefore: don’t fix anything that does not need to be fixed, keep to plugged connections of tabletop, cabinet and table legs.

Bark-beetle-wood table leg, detail

Dressing table from pallets/forest wood and LED, finished

Expenses … about two working days to be net, but it went qwuicker than i thought, just because i made some of the stuff here earlier in other projects and had some routine. And you need a solid belt sander. Seriously, without a) a good belt sander and b) a smaller sander for rounder/finer issues you shouldn’t start something like this, otherwise its a drudgery.

Dressing table from pallets / forest wood and LED, constructed, finished

Dressing table, in use

Dressing table, in use, other side

Optional updates: The table could be even prettier with a second branch on the other side of the mirror also provided with some LEDs, to get the two-trees effect of the gate to the Mines of Moria. You should add an additional shelf into the cabinet. Magnets to the cabinet door, for a solid closing. A big red button for light on/off. (what i actually did, later – well, with a green button, but hey.)

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Cat scratching post, cat hut: First test-resting on top

Deutsch

We have a new roommate, who needs some home furniture. I still have some spare wood from the bark beetle wood action lately (the dressing table), so it comes to mind to build a cat scratching post with an integrated cat villa with viewing platforms.

Once again, no “pure pallet furniture” project – one “raw pallet part” used, a half, modified Euro pallet. Confession: i also dismantled material from my first pallet bed. The half pallet is a very suitable base. Also used: remains of the desk disassembly and a half, new euro pallet. Mostly used as completely disassembled pallet boards, plus two reused pressboard shelves whics were used as side support/legs of the first desk in very early times.

Clearly, its more a recycling but a pallet project, but the typical pallet wood look is there, and I like it.

Cat scratching post – half pallet base platform

The basis. Half an Euro pallet, from which one half is covered completely with planks. Since we have to fix the poles here, these should be solid, not kinda splintered or otherwise crumbly boards.

I painted the pallet for the bed usage eaarlier, so I had to grind sharp anyway. For the first time here. no treatment/glazing at all, so give it a good sanding, also to have no dirt, splinters, painting leftovers, whatever.

The barkle beet branches are also sanded, their ends cutted straight, to have a solid fixture later on. I just used longer/thicker wood screws (about 10cm) and drilled four of them through the floorboards into the trunk. Given the solid floorboards, this seems very stable to me, but if you have heavy wood, lighter palette boards, etc., consider reinforcing with metal underneath. As I said, the longer the stem, the greater the leverage. Last not least: some cats may have some more weight and destructive energy as others to add to the needed stability considerations.

Cat scratching post: first branch mounted

Cat Cottage, ground floor: Construction

And here it ends with the “pallet elements”. All following work uses tree trunks/branches and much abraded pallet boards. The “floor” goes through the hole in the base pallet on a suitably sawn pressboard piece.

Roof of the ground floor/balcony

Upper floor, floor

Cats Cottage, upstairs with gable roof

Same goes for the “entrance front”, since I was too lazy to cut several boards and do the additional grinding. In retrospect, i regret it: we had painted the front later, since it just didn’t look good with the “normal wood”.

The second floor. Skipped some work progress here, but that’s really cutting boards to size, grind, attach. The “hatch” leads through the ceiling of the basement to the first floor and also directly to the balcony. All edges need to be rounded/sanded accordingly.

Placed behind the second tree trunk: this is not one of the bark beetle wood branches, but some other branch we found in the forest. Also simply fixed with solid wood screws through the bottom floor.

Now some smaller boards, simply to be placed on the branches ends.

Cat cottage and scratch pole, mostly completed

Abraded seat boards in different heights, connectors

I just drilled holes with a 18mm drill into the branch tips and abused some leftover copper tube from the lighting structure of the steampunk desk as connectors. Idea behind: from now on, the whole construction is so heavy that I want nothing “fixed” anymore, but “pluggable”, to keep the whole thing transportable.

A nice side effect: if you’re finished and (like me) have ideas to change/improve the whole structure again, it’s modificated/rebuild easily. Example: the platforms turned out to be too small, specifically, at least these on top to sit/lie onand need to be wider. We will come to it.

First test sitting

The cat is skeptical. I was, too. Everything seemed a little too high and somehow unbalanced, and what bothered me in particular were the missing large, comfortable high places to have a nap on. Nevertheless, it was quite reassuring that the landlord at least deemed the balcony as worthy for an examination.

Anyway, back to the basement, cutting a few boards more. To be exact: two. One broader and one narrow board were left over, both of pallet-typical 120cm length. One sawn to 4 × 30 (narrow) and one to 3 x 40 (wide), two boards each cutted at the edge obliquely with the jigsaw and bolted.

Lawns, bottom

Lawns, top

Upstairs again. Reminder: straight cutted, solid branch/trunk ends are crucial. The piece of branch that was attached to the posterior branch which seemed too high and shaky, transdformed to a solid improvement of the balöcony structure after having it cutted better and fixed with the 18mm copper tube connection.

In the meantime, my girlfriend painted the rather ugly, eyecatching front entrance panel, and I wrapped an about 8mm thick Sisal rope to the rear trunk and fixed it with hot glue.

Cat scratching post, cushioned sunbathing areas

Sisal rope round the scratching post

Cat cottage platforms, from below

The master benevolently accepts his gift

The Master took note of the latest improvements and kindly accepted his gift. Since then, he’s encountered frequently on the middle deck area. Off the record: he’s a fraidy-cat and is scared of the entrance, and once he climbed to the very top, we were proud as hell, regarding this incredibly brave cat. But while he majestically enjoys the middle observation deck, these little character flaws can be overlooked.

Time needed: A bit more then a weekend. Material requirements: about one pallet, plus branches. Everything now completely untreated and only sanded.

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Pallet benches in Poland

Deutsch

First, we had some holiday somwhere around Katowice, Poland, and well, they make use of pallets for furniture stuff there, too. Second, some people here at home at “Utopiastadt” do some nice and creative stuff, and i’d love to join in, but there’s also still some stuff to do here. But nevertheless, some third-hand-inspirations.

One of the beautiful, flower-decorated polish pallet benches and – simply made – tables that we came about there. I was reminded on the pallet benches in Bochum, while these were slightly more handsome, I must admit, although I am completely for the “Ruhrpott” otherwise.

I have to admit, i like the flower pot decorations. Though i’m not really the “flowery” type. NEvertheless, when you see it here, it becomes an obvious, if not obligatory add on.

Pallet benches, Poland, front

The inevitable stacked pallet table, Poland

What amused me in Poland: very pretty pallet stacks with innovatively cutted vegetable display. Somehow a bit “pallet stack overkill”, but it looked pretty and since then, I keep thinking on this slanted half pallet and how it could be used in other constructions.

Pallets in Poland, shopping center

Pallets in Poland, exciting slope

Pallet beer table set

Thats all from there. Back in Wuppertal we visited – thanks to some guests we had then – some corners where we wouldn’t have been otherwise. In downtown we saw a most charmingly – albeit using heavy metalwork – manufactured pallet beer table.

As a part of this tour we were also in the “sculpture park”. I can highly recommend it, in case that you visit Wuppertal or the area here and are interested modern art. I do not know if this one is still running, but the following two pallets were the basis of two sculptures of Erwin Wurm’s “Am i still a house?” – exhibition, and these sculptures touched a few things in me, but here, I’d tell only about pallet related stuff: once beautifully “beveled” pallet planes and a very exciting color. Nothing to see of the art works here – have a look for yourselves there

Pallet pad, exciting coloring

Palette pad, beautiful bevels

Then finally, Utopiastadt. They were already awesome last year, and their use pf pallets has improved further. They expanded some “pallet chillout areas” on both sides of the bike lane connecting the city districts of wuppertal, and these do permute happily as needed by their occupants.

Permutable pallet benchs at Utopiastadt

Pallet benchs, Utopiastadt

The “Hatter” is the bar providing drinks and culture and is incidentally the only gastronomy beyond various hacker camps and -congresse where I encountered Flora Mate, the best ever Mate variant crossed my palate.

Utopiastadt also provides a bicycle repair station, and an appropriate addon are the bicycle stands they had /temporariliy – there. Somehow an obvious variant of pallet usage, obce you see it. I’d only park the bicycles turned by 90°.

Pallet biycle stand, temporary installation, Utopiastadt

Bicycle stand, disposable pallets, temporarily, Utopiastadt

What was really exciting: a combination of planter and brightly colored pallet chair. That one is some really massive stuff, seemingly varnished with a white foundation and later coloured with probably weatherproof varnish. I’m excited and do also want pallet furniture with extendable footrests.

Large pallet chair, coloured and with extendable footrests

Pallet bench, integrated flowerbed, Utopiastadt

I think its cool. I stopped painting my stuff some time ago now, but if I would paint them again, i guess something colourful like that would be definitely considered.

Pallet stairs, Kirchheim

Well, and to the whole playful/pretty/rustic stuff, an example of swabian pragmatism. A find that I had to photograph during my last visit in Kirchheim which i had not posted since. I’m still undecided whether this counts as said swabian pragmatism, some “most important: we get into our house”-thing or simply an endearing oddity, probably partly all of that. I am happily amused and will not stand stupid remarks, to quote the master.

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