I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do with it so naturally I turned to Pinterest and there were So. Many. Ideas. I also absentmindedly googled ideas and came across 1001Pallets. It's an entire website of pallet ideas. It is basically Pinterest for pallets! There were so many ideas that I wanted to try, but since a prayer board was one of my New Year's resolutions, I thought I would start there. (Luckily, multiple people have offered me pallets for future projects).
This was my inspiration picture...
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And this is where I started.
Yes, I was a little worried about the paint, but I also thought that it added some character. So I just went with it.
The first step to this whole thing is demolition. I am a single girl. I have a basic toolbox, but that's about it. But I am also fiercely independent. When I was 8, I put together a trampoline because my parents told me they would do it later but I wanted to jump on it. Right then. So, while I was ill-equipped for this project, I was not going to ask someone for help. Lucky for me, I follow a lot of home renovation blogs and knew what to do... Enter Home Depot.
You can rent tools. It's great! And it was so easy! I would totally recommend it. The tools can be rented for 4-hour increments so for the first round, I rented a reciprocal saw. Everything I researched said that the reciprocal saw was the way to go.
They also recommended a 12" demolition blade. This is the way to go, because it cuts through wood and nails.
Then I just started breaking everything down.
I recommend gloves. And goggles. And maybe some earplugs. I did wear gloves for this part but took them off for the picture. You can see how easy it was to just saw straight down. After everything was broken down, I ended up with this...
I like the shelf, but if I were going to actually use it I would redo it with a neater pallet. This one had a little wear and tear that made the shelf not very usable. After that, I sorted through the pieces and decided which ones to use for the board.
On Day #2 (although, it wasn't really the next day...) I went back to Home Depot. This time I rented a circular hand sander and bought some sandpaper to go with it. If I had to do it over again, I would have gotten sandpaper with 2 different grits.
I went with a 150 which is a good finish grit, but next time I would probably go with a rougher grit to start and then finer grit for the finish. Oh well, c'est la vie.
So now that I had taken everything apart and figured out which pieces I wanted to use, I sanded each piece individually. I thought about sanding all the paint off, but I kind of like the look of it.
Ignore the fact that it looks like I have alien hands! I thought I had a picture of the layout once everything was sanded, but I couldn't find it. Sorry!
I watched the wood for a while and then decided that it was too big. On Day #3, I thought about going back to Home Depot to rent another saw but I was lazy/impatient and just wanted to keep it going so I measured the length I wanted, marked it on each piece and then used my regular hand saw to cut each piece down. Maybe not ideal, but I decided that I'm going for a natural, raw, rustic look so I went with it.
Then I lined everything up again and connected them with some spare pieces of wood. Well first I used some wood glue to help reinforce everything and then I used spare pieces of wood.
After that, the next stage was staining. I got a gray-tinted stain at Home Depot (Weathered Oak) and stained everything on a particularly gorgeous, sunny day!
I did 2 coats of stain- sanding in between with a regular sander.
Then I went to Michael's for the finishing touches. I bought some adhesive letters and some clothes pins. The clothes pins were cute and green with patterns. I thought they went well with the wood. Then I took no pictures. Sorry!
I cut out the letters and lined them up along the top so I could look at spacing. Then I just eyeballed the placement. There was no measuring. I did the Y in the middle first and then worked my way out on both sides.
I did the same thing with the clothes pin. No measurements here! The green was a little too bright and lime for the wood so I used a couple coats of stain to get it a little more rustic. Then I glued them on to wood in a random pattern.
The one on the bottom right will be used for answered prayers. I'm excited about how it turned out and have lots of ideas for my next pallet project!
* I am far from a photographer, so just pretend like all these pictures are staged and beautiful and the lighting is perfect...
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