End of An Era: or, Why I'm Never Using Pallets Again

My latest two creations are an end table and a TV stand that go with my coffee table. I say "go with" instead of "match" because the construction methods and styles vary, if only slightly. Here they are, standing tall and proud in my (soon-to-be-former) living room:

We had two ugly pieces of furniture, which were basically just slabs of wood stuck on rebar and painted. We tried painting the end table white to make it prettier, but that just made it ugly and bright.
In the end, I figured that I could cover them up they way you would a bad tattoo (I'm looking at you, tramp-stamps, and not in a good way).

Here's a "before" picture of the entertainment center, belched up from the archives:

So I framed them out with store-bought wood and industrial-looking metal features, just like the coffee table, only they had a solid base instead of just a frame. I also attached slats to the back to cover up wires:

This was a brilliant move on my part, assembling them this way, because I could then use my awesome Dewalt circular saw to cut them all off at the same length, in line with the top slab. All the home improvement shows have this kind of thing, where you just zip along and everything's nice and even. Let's just say that I made a total cock-up of it, but at least it's all hidden now. It's never as easy as it looks.

Here's the full framing:

And now primed:

Looks so much better, doesn't it? You might think that all those layers of color and bare wood looked neat, but that's just the magic of television. In reality, it looked like shit.


At this point, I was thinking that the thing looked weird and top heavy, especially after all the black paint was applied, which, apparently, I forgot to photograph. Please paste a picture of a bucket of your tears in the comments.

You also may be wondering why I didn't photograph the end table. Good question.

Then I bought a belt sander because you MUST have a belt sander, table sander, or planer to do this. It's still a ton of work, to scrape the hair and stains off the warped and brittle wood. I threw some polycrylic on them, which is super, super good stuff. Cleans up like latex paint (soap and water), and protects the wood without staining it. Three coats and it works like  a charm.

Anyway, here's some pallet wood:

The assemble of the tops took on many forms, but in the end they turned out like variations on the theme of the original:

This marks the end. I will do no more furniture using pallet wood, except for my next project, where I use some of the stronger pallet slats to shore up an engineered-plan tabletop for a platform desk. That's a fancy way of saying "19-inch high tabletop."

It's the end of an era in more ways than one, faithful reader. Those of you who made it to the end of this blog get treated with the future:

That's right: Kim and I bought a house, and that's an actual picture from the real estate listing. You thought maybe building furniture was my thing? Hell, I was just getting warmed up. First things first: I'm going all Mike Holmes on a drooping wall in the master bedroom. That's right: spray foam insulation, motherfuckers.

We move in just about a month, if all goes well.

Thanks for reading.