I saw an idea on Pinterest. I thought that looks so easy, I could put that together in about 30 minutes, paint it and be done. You know how all DIY projects go. They look like a weekend project and turn into two months. This was a pretty easy project even if it took about 3 weekends between stopping to run kids around and make meals. Yes, it's hard to get my DIY hobbies done while I work and feed a family. I suppose that makes my projects that much more rewarding.
As I looked through ideas for a pallet coffee table, I really thought I was going to stack two pallets and screw them together. I've worked a lot with pallets so I'm not sure why I thought this would work. The problem with stacking two pallets together is that they are not the best quality wood so no two pallets are hardly ever the same size. Also, pallets have spaces between the wood and pretty big spaces at that. This is not ideal for a table top. That left us with taking the pallets apart. If you've ever taken a pallet apart, you will know that this is quite a feat in itself.
My husband decided to make a frame out of 2x4's and then fill it in with pallet wood. We have two different sizes of pallet boards so we had to play with the wood to make it look right.
As you can see, we used longer boards for the edges then filled in with the small pieces of wood.
Once he made the frame we realized that all the pallet wood pieces from various pallets were also different widths. This is something we didn't take into consideration before building the frame.
As you can see here, we had quite a thin gap between the two rows of pallet wood. We ended up cutting them down with a table saw to make the middle pieces more the same width and filled in as we went along. I figured for this table, I was going to paint it so it really didn't matter what the wood looked like.
Here is the table top completely put together. It really looked pretty this way but we have a pallet wall on one of our livingroom walls so I didn't want too much pallet wood in the room.
I chose to dry brush paint the pallet. This is the underneath part of the table top. I went ahead and painted it too since you can see the inside through the slats where the books sit.
Here's the first coat of white. I did go back and touch it up. Dry brush painting is where you get a little paint on your brush and quickly brush it across the item you are painting. Sometimes you can also wipe the brush on a rag first before applying the paint. You swipe the paint on in places here and there and fill in as you'd like.
After I painted this layer, we started putting the second layer together. After we built the second later, I painted it and we screwed both together. Now you can probably guess why this took about three weekends. I had to dry brush, let it dry, build the second frame, paint it, let it dry and so on.
Here is the finished product. I didn't take pictures of the assembly since I was running a child to a practice and my husband just completed it while I was gone. Probably to get it out of his garage. You'll notice the rough edges. We did go back and trim those up by pulling the splinters out with pliers. We also removed the glue you see above the wheel.
The metal casters are from Menards. The link provided isn't the exact size but it is the type. I think I spent about $7.00 a piece on them. They are pretty heavy duty. My husband glued them and screwed them into the wood at the bottom. If you notice, he added another layer to the bottom of the table because it wasn't tall enough compared to our sectional. The screw will also stay in the 2x4 much better than pallet board. Pallet wood tends to split easily.
This is a picture of the table before he added the last layer to make the table taller but I wanted you to see how the books fit in. This pallet is not only easy to do, it's custom for our living room. It's really quite big which is what I wanted. I also wanted a table that was sturdy. My family can prop their feed up on it, my six year old can spread her art supplies out on it or all her Shopkins, and my teenagers can spread their textbooks on it while doing homework. This is pretty darn heavy even though it doesn't look like it is. Thankfully it rolls. It is actually the one thing people comment on when they walk into our house, this and the pallet wall. I think it turned out amazing! I'm so glad we decided to finish it!
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