Re-purposed Pallet

According to my brother-in-law there are about 3,000 things to do with old pallet wood.

This is what I did.

"To what end?" one may ask. Originally I built it for a booth for an emergency preparedness fair. Seems a strange type of fair, but when one lives so near a fault line, it is probably a good idea.

Then I decided to make it slightly more useful for us. put it on casters and waterproofed it. I also covered the top with backer-board and tiled a counter top, which matched the wood until I put the sealer on it. It has two deep basins sinks which are perfect for filling with ice and keeping drinks chilled at a BBQ or for washing fruits and vegetables before preserving them. The drains are attached to a hose that can be placed in the nearby garden so as not to waste grey water. At a future date, there will be a faucet attached to the wall. 

There was some excess, so I searched for items to make from pallet wood and stumbled across these trays. I like them and my dad has given me a number of handles over the course of my lifetime, so I made one. The issue is it's large enough to hold a half-baker sheet cookie tray, which makes it a bit too big to store in the cupboard.

The natural solution then, is to make it a wall hanging so it can be displayed on the wall when it's not in use and then be taken down and rinsed off when needed. One of my friends helped me out with the lettering. She's pretty skilled when it comes to most things. 

As for the booth. It would be a nice place for a kissing booth for my daughter's sixteenth birthday party. Just kidding, I'm not that kind of mom and I'm really hoping and praying she isn't that kind of daughter. She was told she could sell lemonade from it, but then considering the neighborhood, probably she can't. It will fit on the patio once we get that built and can be used as a side bar for drinks or desserts or for a fishing pond or for puppet shows. Yes, we have a lot of puppeteers in our household. Since I don't actually have the patio, I've included some desserts here and you can imagine attending a Halloween party at our house with these sitting on the booth/bar that is located on the patio when it is built. It makes for great ambiance, don't you think?  

Another use for pallet use is as a table top. One of my neighbors was throwing out a card table because one of the leg braces had snapped, but as I know a guy that welds, I picked it up. The legs were brown and the top was this lovely vinyl that I didn't particularly care for, so I decided to paint it and recover it. When my grandmother died, she had some folding chairs that she didn't take with her. One taupe, three white, and two gold. A card table isn't astronomically expensive, but free is still better, especially when one has the materials to fix it up properly. 

The first step was to remove the table top from the frame. In this particular case the top was held on with hex screws so I just removed the screws and off came the top. 

The next step was to sand down the chairs and table, or at least rough them up so the new paint would hold well. Once that was done it was a matter of painting. While a brush or roller could be used, I own a pneumatic paint gun and I find that the coverage is more even when the paint is sprayed on, so that is how I applied the paint. 

Then it was a matter of recovering the top of the table. I chose fabric because it is more lively, and then put on a layer of vinyl to make it water and stain proof. I cut the fabric and vinyl larger than the original top so that it could be folded over and stapled down. I cut it about 1 1/2 inches bigger, but that measurement would vary depending on the thickness of your surface. 

Then I folded the edges of the fabric over to the back side of the tabletop and fastened it with staples, carefully gathering the edges to go around the curve. The same process was repeated with the vinyl. 

Once the top had been recovered, I attached the frame to the top and had a brand new (to me) card table.
It would be nice if I had a lovely photogenic background, but the unfinished basement space will have to do.

Remarkably, my sister also found a cast-off card table. (Can you imagine? People throwing out perfectly repairable furnishings.)The top of hers had vinyl that wrapped around and over the sides, but it had been destroyed. She peeled off the top and was left with just the frame, which she also spray painted black.

(Above is the top, after she disposed of it. Sometimes I don't remember to get before pictures)

Then, instead of buying the wood or backer board for a new surface, she used pallet wood, sanded it down and stained it to make more of a beach style card table.

She already had the chairs to go with it. What a remarkably talented individual she is, right?