Pallet Furniture at its best

This beautiful 2-seat sofa is really made of shipping pallet. This French design company Studio-aparte aspired for a new recycled pallet aesthetic that can match any contemporary interior. When painted in black, it's hard to guess what this sofa is made of.

Shipping pallet

You can find tons of upcycling with shipping pallets, but these german designer (Produktwerft) makes coffee tables with a design and a finish I have never seen before.

Upcycling shipping pallet into...... The Moon Crib

My new baby came February 1st, and I wish I had this awesome idea... Making him a moon crib with recycled shipping pallets!

This great idea comes from the designer Emilie from Creme Anglaise and her furniture maker-husband Jocelyn Costis. This crib is perfectly safe, it has been sanded and varnished with baby approved chemicals. It makes a very soft crib. It takes 12 days to make it and 3 weeks waiting list.
It's probably a pretty heavy crib and your baby will feel safe inside. My only concern is the price of this upcycled furniture...... 990 euros... I think that I would prefere to give it a try before buying this great concept.

Time for growing plants and do some upcycling

If like me you have a limited amount of space to do some plant growing, you might like the idea of upcycling items such as pallet, bottle, pipes to grow your veggies and flowers. Take a look at some options:

Pallets:

Vertical gardening from lifeonthebalcony.com

Gutters:

A full tutorial on how to make your own hanging gutter

PVC Pipes:

Plastic Bottles:

Already shown in my blog from here.

Cans:

Bags :

Found here

Now I think it's time to seed and start growing plants!

A kitchen cabinet made from shipping pallet

This cabinet was made and found on Shabby Love blog. Probably one of the best good looking upcycling I found with shipping pallet.

On her blog, you'll find a full tutorial. This furniture is not so difficult to make, you'll just need drywall screws, a screwdriver and a circular saw (or jig saw), also, 4 hinges and 2 cabinet knobs.

The main frame

That's a lot of extra storage for almost free and it's really good looking, go check her blog, here.

Bed made from upcycled pallets!

I'm torn between buying a fancy bed for my son or trying this cute upcycling! My only problem is that it's time consuming, but so much fun to make. Also, don;t forget that the pallet needs to be sanded properly to avoid your little one from getting splinters.

For a tutorial, click here

An easy pallet upcycling

Almost nothing to do on the pallet, beside using some of your painting left over and few hooks. It looks beautiful.

Starting my day with a great find!...

This morning, this is what I saw when I was going to work:

My day could not start better than that! I could only take 2 big ones and one little one. Now I'm thinking what will be my next project(s) after the pallet chair. Maybe a fancier chair with crazy lines? or maybe a bench?
I'm still thinking... but I'll post my next project very soon.


Also I saw benches made of salvaged wood or recycled pallet and I love the work. I wanted to do something with hairpin legs for a while, that might inspire me. It's from KOFFdesigns, and this is my favorites:

A chair made from a shipping pallet (4/4)

Here it is, I could finish the chair before the week end!

It is made with less than 1 shipping pallet. I tried to make a chair with thin profile different from most of the bulky one I could find on line (see previous post). When the wood is ready to be cut, it takes around 2 hours to make it, with some training, the chair can be made in 1 hour. It's really easy and rewarding to make.

The Tools:

Jig saw, tape measurement, drill

The material:

Deck screws (1.5 inches minimum) and a shipping pallet.

 

How to make it:

The pallet I found, come with two different size of wood.

40 X 3.5 X 5/8 and 

30 X 1.5 X 3

The legs (A and B) come from 40 X 3.5 X 5/8 pieces and the piece of wood that the legs are attached to, come from 30 X 1.5 X 3 pieces.

Step 1 is to make the cut in the stud C that is around 19 inches long.

Step 2 is to cut the legs (A and B) and attache them to the stud.

Step 3 is to cut the pieces that make the seat and the back seat. Start attaching the first piece on the seat closest to the back legs. Cut one piece and screw it, then cut another one.

A regular seat should be 16 inches wide.

The Cost:

As long as you have a pallet and screws, it's pretty cheap to make .

Conclusion:

Now that I know how to make a regular chair, I think that I will try to create or replicate a fancier design. The chair is really confortable. I might be tempted in writing a full tutorial and sell the pdf online and give it for free to the followers of my website (thanks Stuart for being my first and only followers in spite of the not-so-bad traffic my blog is having).

   

  

A chair made of a pallet (3/4) progress report...

This weekend I was hoping to complete the chair project, but I only could spend a couple of hours on the project. I tried to stick to the first sketch of the chair I was thinking about and made this :

      

The good news is that to make this chair you just need a table saw or a jig saw, they both great for it, a drill / screwdriver, tape measurement and a pencil.
I will continue to work on the chair as soon as possible, worse case scenario, it will be this week end, but I might be lucky and find some time during the week.
I will try to give a step by step description of the making process.

I just need to finish the back seat, it should not take more than 30min. My only question is, where should I stop filling the back seat?  All the way through or low enough to be confortable to seat on? I might go for the second option.
Should I finish the seat using wood stainer and give an ironic rich look to this almost free chair, or stay basic and leave it this way?
If you have any idea or advice, just drop me a comment!

A chair made from a pallet (2/4)

I have to step back from my ambitious design in the previous post. In a first time, my goal will be to make a functional and stable chair but I will also try to add a modest touch of style. It's not because the wood come from a pallet that I should stick with the rustic look I have seen most of the time.

I think I know how the profile will be, but still hesitating between these two.
I think I might have some time to start this project this week end and luckily I will have some pictures on monday to show if there's any progress. Now I have the pressure, because most of the time, when I talk about a project, it's because i'm just thinking about it or it's finished... this one has just started.

A chair made from a pallet

I have not posted for a couple of weeks, but I'm thinking and trying to collect few pallets to start making a chair, I don't have the final design yet but I'm trying to make something a bit different from the chair I have seen around. This is the usual designs:

I would like to come with a design that looks more like this one:

Something that looks more comtemporary, but still easy to make with one single pallet, like the one I just found yesterday:

I'll try to do this project as fast as possible.... and will keep you updated with the design I'm planning to choose.

Recycling pallet into furnitures

This pieces of furniture made by artist Mark Dabelstein inspired me when I saw them; and like a lot of posts from this blog, I keep this as a project for later. At my work, I see a lot of pallet going to trash, and I will start collecting pieces to make one cabinet like this.

The trick to make such cabinet is the joinery, and today I will buy the Kreg jig for $39, this is a wonderful tool to create hole that will allow you to join two pieces of wood using screws, without having to be a professional woodworker. This is what I need. 

 The other tool needed would be a circular saw, wood glue and patience...