Reclaimed furniture

So what is reclaimed furniture?  It is an idea that I can not take credit for, however I am giving it a shot.  Having built raised garden beds out of pallets all summer long, I began looking at some of the pallets and wondered if I could reuse them in such a way as to take an ugly item that is destined for the burn pile, or landfill or some other fate where it would never be appreciated and put it to a practical purpose.  So I grabbed some pallets that I could work with and started making furniture out of them.  First you have to find a pallet that will work for your needs.  As you can see they are rough, full of splinters and dirty...that is ok because we are going to the next step.

Sanding, and lots of it.  Here I am using a third sheet sander, I find that it works well with 60 grit sand paper and lots of it.  I will move to 120. then 220 grit paper before I am done.  I also have a palm sander which works really well.

The next step is to purpose the piece.  Is it going to be a piece for a workshop, or garden?  This piece I decided to due as a piece that could be put in a living room, or somewhere else inside.  So now I cut 4x4's for the legs, this is the only lumber that I bought for the project.

Now that I have measured three times, and cut once I attached the legs using heavy duty screws.  When doing this step I square the legs to the front of the table top, and not the side piece.  The reason for this is that the side pieces of pallets support a lot of weight, and they bow out, or are not perfectly lined up.  But the table top tends to be more square, and it gives the piece a better look.  Now that the legs are supported, I need to add support and help square the piece up.  I do not know if in true wood working this is kosher, however it works really well and looks good.  So I go to another pallet that I picked up, take it apart and use some really nice 1x1 lumber.  It is a hardwood, but I am not sure exactly what type.  I take the inside measurements, and add a bracket, this is another item that I purchased.

After doing that on both sides, and securing it the table is ready for stain.  Now a couple of notes, 1. Sand your 4x4's before attaching them because it is so much easier.  I used un-milled lumber, it is rustic and looks like it belongs with the pallets.  2. I do not endorse products, however, Stanley "L" brackets are the worst.  First they are made in China, and secondly they are not uniformly stamped out, and sometimes the screws they provide go right through the hole.  I had the same problem with the Garden Beds that I made so it was not just 'fluke' it's a real quality control issue.

 Now you are ready for stain.  My goal here is to sell this piece and I know that the darker stains are in, so that is what I decided to do.  After staining I added several coats of Polyurethane to seal it, and really make it shine.  When adding the polyurethane make sure you wait at least 4 hours ( I waited overnight ) and you must lightly sand between coats.

And there is the finished table.  The actual time was probably about an hour of sanding and taking the pallet apart, then about an hour to put it together, with about 24 hours for staining and finishing.

The neat thing is that the cost of the table breaks down to $8.00 for the 4x4, $2.95 for the brackets (which will be less after I use up my current stock) about $2.00 in sandpaper, and probably $5.00 in stain and finish.  For less than $20.00 I have recycled and reused something that would have ended up in the landfill or someplace else we would not appreciate it.  

More to come on different projects.