Your porch needs a makeover for this summer? Well, consider yourself lucky then as there are a lot of great ideas for this on the internet and since you live in a time when pallet are cool and trendy, you can use these for your porch. Pallets are very resistant, so in case you are afraid that they won’t be able to handle all your guests in case of a porch party, don’t worry about this. Besides the floor of your porch you can also make some nice furniture out of pallets, such as couches and desks. All you need is a bit of patience as you will first need to smoothen their surface, but after that you can create pretty much anything put of them. Your new porch will look beautiful and you will save a lot of money this way. A porch is an essential part of your house as in the summer it is a great gathering place and you can spend a lot of unforgettable moments there. That’s why it is really important for this space to be constantly upgraded to make you feel as comfortable as possible.
source and more details: redoredux-faywray.blogspot.ca
Hey. I was wondering if you have to paint or stain pallet wood when you use it in outdoor projects. Do you know if it is already pressure treated or something?? Why does your’s look so “new?” Did you sand it? thanks for your help!!
Karen
The source is linked at the bottom (small, under the last pic), so you might get a better answer about this particular project on that blog, but the pallet wood is definitely sanded down.
I would be sure to always stain/varnish/weatherproof or paint – pallets are cheap pine, not hardwood, so I’d give that wood all the help I could to make it last. 🙂
This article is total horseshit. I’ve made tons of stuff from pallets old and new. I have never seen one single board look nearly as thick and straight as what you are purporting to be pallet wood.
That wood looks to be high end 2×4’s. Expensive.
That wood ain’t pallet wood.
Jeez Malcom, well aren’t you just a fun filled little lollypop triple dipped in psycho..
You made me laugh. lol
LS is absolutely right by calling out the author on this article, because it has been completely “misrepresented”. Or let us just be frank and call it what is… as Malcolm described, “total horseshit”.
The only thing in that article which can be salvaged from everyday Pallets is the “stringers” or spine portion of the pallet. The top/bottom deckboard’s from a pallet LOOK NOTHING like the top decking used in this article. The author used wood from another source, or if it was from a pallet, they would be so unbelievably rare to find or expensive that it would make this project uneconomic right from the start.
It “would be a great article” to see what the author could do with recycling an ACTUAL PALLET that we all encounter on a regular basis and post pictures of that. It wont be as nice as the pictures shown, but it would be a lot more real-world and less B.S. exaggerations of what you can actually do with old pallets.
Even the “stringers” aren’t pallets, as they are solid, real pallets have openings on at least two sides for the forks of a forklift to get under and lift them. these are all solid all the way to the ground. Not very useful for a pallet.
Billy C .. u r just as wrong as Malcolm .. you ppl must have not seen many pallets
I’ve never seen a “pallet” that looked like anything used in this article either, Carrol. Tell us, since we apparently just don’t know what a shipping pallet actually looks like — what mythical land do you live in where pallet sides are solid (because they don’t need to be picked up by forklift,) and the tops are made of two by fours? No really, where do you live? Because pallets in most of the U.S. are not constructed the way you claim they are.
“what mythical land do you live in where pallet sides are solid”
Most are solid, just google wood pallet…. here is a link to simplify it for you… paulrdsharp.wordpress.com/
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“and the tops are made of two by fours?”
Who said the tops were used???
It is quite obvious that pallet wood was used in this project
AGREE totally with Souris, and a few of the others, I may live in Aussie but we have forklifts here to LIFT things,
Malcolm its alright my husband said the same thing. Construction people just notice these details.
I was thinking the same thing, looks like the stringers are palette wood but the top decking is not. Even if someone surface planed every palette part and ran each through a jointer, they wouldn’t look that clean, that uniform, that thick, etc. Not to mention, the surface wood barely has any nail holes, checks or knots in it…
It’s plain to see that only the stringers were used in this project. If they were planed (which they were, according to the linked article which no one read) they would be just as nice as boards bought from lumber yard except for “nail holes, checks or knots in it…” which I see quite clearly,
You are correct sir.
you may not have seen many good boards on pallets Malcolm .. but I have worked shipping and receiving and seen many good boards on pallets
Not sure if you have heard of tools. We get 1inch thick pallet wood and we cut it straight and put it through a planer and it can look exactly like that and make furniture out of it. There are different pallets made out of hard or soft wood. We get hardwood pallets and except for the holes which can be filled but we don’t as I like the look – they can look like brand new wood.
That is not made out of any pallete I’ve ever seen before. .. that’s all. No pallets that siz are made entirely out of 2x4s! It still looks nice
That’s not pallet wood.
CC Thanks for the laugh!
This is true, it is not pallet wood on top. It appears to me that the pallets are stripped of their planks and are the foundation of the pourch. Fresh new 2x4s are used for the actual pourch planks. Still saves a ton of money and reuses wood, I think it is an awesome idea and am going to start rounding up pallets
This is a great idea – but that top wood is NOT from pallets.
Considered this for my concrete patio until I read this, thank you for commenting because single moms that don’t have a man around to do this…see stuff like this, spend the money on it to try it then are at a complete and total loss when it goes wrong and then I’m out valuable money.
For all those having a cow over the “pallet wood” there are some new boards in there but look at the old ones. No, it’s not wood from the standard pallets you see behind the grocery store. Most nonstandard pallets are made from rough cut dimensional hardwood lumber that has not been milled down yet. Those cheesy standard pallets aren’t worth the time, effort, and energy it takes it takes to collect and dismantle them. Don’t be fooled into thinking your saving them from the dump either. They are simply waiting to be sent back to where they came from or some old guy in a raggedy pickup truck to get them and sell them back. Anyplace that uses a lot of pallets recycles as many as they can.
Great ! i dont try DIY with so Big Project , i made bookcase everyday.. sad
All you negative Nancy’s – this is part pallet and any “construction” person can tell that the underneath is reinforced 2×4’s. As for the top – they are in fact possibly pallets. Ever taken the time to take a part a pallet and sand the wood down?! I have! And you totally can get the look of the above boards and then stain them to the finish you want! Sheesh people. Be creative and thank the author for sharing something that can MAKE you be creative. Step outside the box or at least look at the original post before you go bashing someone.
Personally I think the general idea is great. Thank you for sharing.
I think this a very great idea by making the front porch with pallet wood. Hope it looks good for my home.
Havind dismantled many a pallet to burn in our log boiler I can see that the entire porch could have been made from stringers i.e not the top wood but the 2 x 4 that the tops are nailed to. The base could be made from rougher, unplaned softwood stringers and the top wood made from planed and sanded hardwood stringers placed so that nail holes to the side and hidden. There are typically 3 of these stringers in a standard pallet so you need an awful lot of pallets to do a job like this! Also as some have pointed out, most pallets are simply rough softwood but if you visit a pallet recycling company you can get hold of pallets made of tropical wood. I bought a load of oak pallets for very little money to make a double compost bin that looks great and has lasted for years without treatment. However, dismantling pallets is a soul destroying job and the labour needed to get the wood to the standard shown could easily outway the cost of new hardwood. You would need to be dedicated, with plenty of pallets, patience doing it for the pleasure of recycling!
I don’t care if these are truly pallets being used to make this project work. I’m thankful for the idea and can make alterations as needed!!! Great post and thank you for the idea!!!
I just wrote a detailed comment on this article, but when it comes right down to it, you make a good point! 🙂 I like your optimism & positive attitude!! 😉
I’ve also seen many pallets, having to load/unload materials from them for Lowe’s. I agree that not all pallets are created equal, depending on the size and weight of the loads they’re meant to support–e.g. materials like tile, large bags of cement, etc. which require heavier-duty pallets made from slightly thicker, more dense wood, versus other pallets that need only to support things like paper towels–in which case cheaper, thinner, lighter weight, and less dense wood provides adequate support (and are often quickly assembled and more poorly made).
That said, wood from *some* pallets may or may not be salvageable, depending on the circumstances.
In this case, the frame of the deck *might* have *some* pieces of wood from pallets, but some pieces look brand new…and if they were planed and sanded to give that appearance, they’d be significantly smaller in width and depth than what is shown above. And as for the top of the deck, *IF* a person had spent the ridiculous amount of time it would take to plane and sand EACH and EVERY single board, BEFORE installation, by the time the boards would’ve appeared to be new, they would NOT have had the width or depth of the boards shown.
Tropical woods in any type of pallet–even on stringers–even for those meant to support the heaviest loads–are something I never once saw in my history of working Lowe’s. They’re less accessible and more expensive, making them highly impractical and uneconomical for the company to produce/acquire in such massive quantities across the US (and oak is not a tropical wood). Maybe that’s just Lowe’s, but if anyone knows where I can get pallets made of 2x4s from oak, PLEASE tell me–because I want some!! 🙂
Sure would like to know where this person got their pallets from! I’ve never seen pallets made out of 2×4’s.
I love the way the 2×4s look i think i might try this on my mother’s back porch
I hate to tell you but there are some awesome pallets out there. My ex-husband brought home great pallets from his work. We disassemble them & used the boards in my daughters playhouse on the walls. The boards looked like they were purchased. Nothing rough! They were as if they’d been sanded! So yes, it depends on where you get them!
That is 2×2’s or specialty pallets. Very rare and yes you better test that wood or you’re inviting termites to your door step!