Monday, January 19, 2009

Make a Garden Work Table from a Pallet

Pallets are a ubiquitous building material, your free lumber yard in tough times. Homegrown Evolution patched together the garden work table above for use with seedlings and storing pots and watering cans. Hopefully the picture is all you need to put one together yourself.

Some tips for working with pallets:

1. We prefer projects that don't involve disassembling the pallet. The nails in pallets aren't meant to be removed. Trying to take one apart with a crowbar will, in most cases, result in a lot of split, useless wood. A Sawzall reciprocating saw would work better if you must take one apart. For the table above we simply cut the pallet in half with a circular saw and handsaw.

2. Use screws not nails and predrill all holes. Pallet wood is very brittle and splits easily.

For some other design ideas check out:

This nice coffee table. Note that you simply use the whole pallet.

And this cool idea: an art/architecture collective Municipal Workshop has a nice way of avoiding the problem of pulling pallets nails. They cut pallets apart and use all the small pieces of wood like tiles. Here's some more info on their "Autotron Unit", pictured above.
Posted by Mr. Homegrown at 10:33 AM
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13 comments:

  1. How very impressive! I'm humbled. First the STOP sign, now the pallet. I can't wait to see what you're gonna do with the manhole covers in the neighborhood!
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  2. I love ur pellet table! I mean palate! I mean PALLET >_< Seriously though it's very very cool...
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  3. I love this idea for the pallet garden table and will build some for my homemade greenhouse... very handy. Tks for sharing.. picture is better then a 1000 words ;o)
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  4. Wow, nice one. Wished I'd had it years ago when I had my green house but still will use it this spring.
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  5. I think , I may need to try this out...My garden could use it, and I have been wanting to make a potting bench for a while!
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  7. I'd stub my toes on the bottom pallet
    plus it needs a solid top surface- how else are you going to deal with soil that falls outside of pots.
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  8. Be careful of the splinters... definitely consider wearing gloves while working with them. Once you have them built, you may want to cover it up with something so you don't accidentally splinter yourself.
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  9. Hey, a friend sent me a link to this. Cool! We use pallets for a lot of things around here, but my favorite is the ceiling that my husband built in our strawbale house. You can see it at my blog www.ironwoodfarmproject.blogspot.com and click on the sidebar The House. There's a photo of it now and if you scroll down there are some construction photos. Nice blog!
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  10. Hello, I think a fairly simple piece of furniture to do, throw in my company hundreds of pallets to Birutes as such because they are not profitable but only have to repair a broken table.

    If you need pallets to make furniture with recycled wood by palsaros stock we have in Madrid.

    Here: http://www.paletsmadrid.com can see the pallets to recycle pallets if you need more strength.
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  11. For all you avid organic gardeners out there, I made a 3-bay compost bin with 7-pallets you can see on my blog at www.gardendaddy.blogspot.com.
    I have some extra pallets and will make this potting bench out of the two extra smaller size ones I have. As for someone concerned about the dirt falling between the cracks...hey, isn't it just "dirt going back into the dirt" anyway? Add some wheels or casters and roll it into your veggie patch to do your potting or up to your compost bin and just add it back where needed or just wash it into the grass as added feeding, etc.
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  12. I forgot to add this site to my previous comment. This is a GREAT site for how to recycle pallets to build a fence, chicken house, shed or almost anything. Hope you enjoy this helpful site as much as I did, especially those who are the recyclers and reclaimaners of usuable product. http://summerville-novascotia.com/PalletShed/
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  13. I love this post. I have featured it on NZ Ecochick. Please view my post on: http://www.nzecochick.com/2011/11/recycling-ideas-for-garden.html Feel free to grab my featured on button. Thanks for the great idea. I can’t wait to make one.
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