Pallet Coffee Table

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Pallet Coffee Table

After stumbling upon some pallet furniture ideas (as seen in my blog post here) on Pinterest, I completely changed my mind about what I was looking for in a coffee table. I recruited my husband to help me make a new coffee table out of shipping pallets (I am 9 months pregnant so Nate stepped in to make my idea come to life). He had a few extra half pallets down at his office that would be a perfect size. We wanted something smaller than what we had so that we could actually walk around it to get to the couch. We snagged the 2 that were the closest in size (which was still a few inches off). I love that these things are just thrown together with staples, screws, and nails. The wood is all different and I don't think they really care if they line up or not (I guess they don't need to because they are for shipping...not coffe tables).

Pallet Coffee Table - Tutorial

1) Using shipping pallets, align a few of them in order to get the look and height you want. We ended up cutting about an inch off of one of them in order for them to be closer in size (but not perfect... their shipping pallets for goodness sakes!)

NOTE: ***Before selecting your pallet, make sure that you are aware of how the pallet was treated in order to make sure it is safe for your house. All pallets should be marked with a code that lets you know how it has been treated.
-Heat treatment (HT) (SAFEST OPTION FOR USE IN YOUR HOME)-Methyl bromide fumigation (MB) -Chemical pressure impregnation (CPI)It is also very important to make sure that the pallet is free of insects. Make sure the wood is in good condition and does not splinter easy

2) With nails or screws, secure parts of the pallet that are split or coming apart.

3) With a medium grade sand paper, sand the surfaces of the pallets to prep them for stain.

4) Stain both pallets with your desired stain color. Keep in mind that most pallets are made with a variety of wood. The stain will look different on each piece and each pallet. Make sure to wipe off the extra stain in order for it to dry.

5) Let the pallets dry overnight. Using a spray polyurethane, spray a few coats to protect the stain. Make sure to follow the directions on the can. We did multiple light coats with more than 4 hours to dry in between. After 3 coats, the table was a little tacky to the touch. We used 220 grain sand paper and did a very light sanding over the 2 surfaces to take away the tacky feel.

6) Using wood screws, attach the pallets together.

***Before we attached the pallets together, we decided that we wanted the table to be a little higher. We took some left over 2x4s, stained them, and placed them at the base of all 5 support beams. This rased the table 4 inches but did not alter the look. ***