Pallet Table - Part One (The inspiration and the shop work.)

Oh Pinterest, my bane and my delight.

I am blessed to have several amazing and patient men in my life - both of whom appear here frequently. Add to that two lovely men-in-training helpers and my pinterest hobbies become a family event.

A few weeks ago I saw this amazing table on pinterest.

Let me mention several things here - First, the above picture is from an Etsy shop called triple7recycled. It is awesome. You will get completely sucked in if you visit. This also means the people who built this table know what they are doing and probably sat down and planned it all out, etc. Me... not so much.

Second, I often have "eyes bigger than stomach" syndrome when it comes to projects. The fact that my husband humors me (and will run around on a Saturday afternoon helping me collect pallets etc.) just encourages my sometimes unrealistic creative streak. (Here is an example of where it worked out well!) 

So, Zeke spent some time one Saturday helping me pull apart some pallets in my father's shop.

And a few weeks later I show up on a weekday and beg for help to figure out how to create our own fantastic piece of pallet furniture. My dad has a great space for working on projects and several amazing power tools I am kind of afraid to use. (I know perfectly well how to use a radial arm saw, etc. but if there is a man around willing to do it for me, I will gladly step aside. Yes, yes, woman power and all that - but sometimes the greatest example of power is allowing someone better suited to the task to accomplish it faster and better than I can. In this case my "mom-brain" hasn't seem to have gone away so I am happy to leave dangerous power tool usage to someone else.) 

So, here I am with a stack of torn up pallets and a picture. No plans. No measurements. Only a rough idea of what I want to accomplish and a whole lot of motivation.  

Internet to the rescue. We found a blog that gave another person's experience creating a table from pallets and away we go.

We discussed which angle we wanted to use and decided on 45 degrees (primarily because it made the math easier and required less adjustment of the table saw.) This turned out to be a great plan because the frame joints are 45 degree angles so this just makes the whole process a bit easier.

         

I prefer the pieces that were more weathered and had more character but we also had to find pieces less warped and cracked and this was a bit harder. Our next pallet project I will do a little more planning ahead of time. (Eh, maybe I will, but let's be honest - I don't generally create around planning.)




Pieces needed to be sanded.

And pieced together (just laid in place to make sure we had the pattern right.)

 

We chose to use some scrap 2x4 for the frame. 

At this point our work day ended and I packed up the pieces to take them home, finish sanding them, stain them and work on putting them together. 

 

We haven't gotten the table put together yet. Unfortunately one of the 2x4's for the frame is badly enough warped that we aren't sure we will be able to get it to line up. Will update you as the project progresses!