A home can be an expensive purchase, with the mortgage, stamp duty and removalists, it’s easy to blow your budget. New furniture doesn’t have to add to your money woes. You can make your own.
Take a stroll through the trendiest suburbs in your city. Go to the cafes, the bars, and have a look in people’s front gardens. It won’t take you long to find furniture made out of recycled pallets (or you can just look on Pinterest like we did).
So with that in mind, here are six ideas for pallet furniture that you can (probably) make yourself.
1. Feature wall
Reclaimed timber has loads of personality; that’s half the reason that pallet furniture is so popular in the first place. So why not cut out the middleman and just put the wood on display? With a bit of sanding and some varnish, you can use the boards from old pallets to cover a wall for a really cool and rustic look.
2. Outdoor furniture
There’s really no limit to the outdoor furniture that you can make from old pallets. Whether you want seating, tables, or even a food prep/kitchen area to accompany your barbeque. The possibilities are endless.
The good thing about pallets is that they’re pretty tough, so you can be confident that your furniture will be robust, even if you’re no carpenter. And whatever the type of furniture you want to make, it’s easy to find ‘How To’ guides online.
3. Garden planter
This one is really useful for anyone with green thumbs or a bit cooking flair. It can be as big or small as you need it to be for your home and you can grow everything from vegetable to herbs or flowers.
This is especially good if you’re short on space or if you live in an apartment that doesn’t have a garden.
4. Coffee Table
This one is basically perfect for recycling old pallets. Even if you’re less “handy” and more “all thumbs”, you should still be able to make your own pallet coffee table. All you need to do is put some legs on it and maybe some extra boards on the top. Of course, you can get more complicated than that, but this can be a really good starting place for those of us that shouldn’t be allowed near power tools.
5. Shelving
Pallets spent their lives holding heavy objects, so what better way to retire them than turning them into shelves.
You can use your pallet shelves as a bookcase or for displaying ornaments. And since pallets are so robust, you can put the shelves outside to hold small potted plants, candles, garden tools, or anything else you can think of.
6. Bed frame
Once again, the strength of pallets come in handy with this one. Most pallets are rated to carry more than a thousand kilograms, so you can be sure that a pallet bed frame will be more than strong enough for even the most rigorous sleeping.
And just like the feature wall, you can make a bed head that shows off the wonderful colours and textures of the wood.
Where to find old pallets
It’s pretty easy to get your hands on old pallets if you look. These days, a lot of factories and warehouses are upgrading to plastic pallets because they are lighter and easier to export. So a lot of the time, they’re giving away their old wooden pallets for free.
