Show Me Your Pallet Projects!

[gtaus]

This is the greenhouse, but red, built out of pallets and scrap windows. I tried to get a sort of close up of the siding that I made. Not sure if you can tell how it works or not from the picture.

Fantastic job! Love it! What do you do for the roof? Can't really see how that was put on.

 

[Theurbanhomestead]

I had to run into town today, so I drove past the Bobcat dealership to checkout any new pallets in the back. I found three long pallets with good wood that looked interesting. If it's not raining tomorrow, I think I'll take the utility trailer into town and picture them up. I love salvaging those long 2X4's.

I love it when you can get 2x4 size boards from pallets.

I live out in the country, and don't know any contractors. But it sure sounds like you have the good connections. Although I save lots of money by building my garden projects with pallet wood instead of buying it at the local big box stores, I get just as much satisfaction taking a landfill product and giving it another life.

I live in the middle of the city which is somewhat unfortunate in some ways, but it does give me access to many things that I otherwise would not have. Pallets and lots of contractors are one of the bonuses. I also get a lot of food for our animals from places that are getting rid of it for one reason or another. The chickens don't care if there is a brown spot on their apple or if the pumpkin they are eating was cracked .

I posted some really good YouTube videos about using pallet wood for Shake style shingles and siding. I think that it looks fantastic. I would like to build a greenhouse using pallet wood boards as Shake siding.

That's really cool do you have the link to the videos. I would love to see other ideas on ways to do stuff with pallets.

 

[Theurbanhomestead]

Fantastic job! Love it! What do you do for the roof? Can't really see how that was put on.

I will need to find or take a better picture of the roof but it is 4x4s (or close enough to 4x4s because the pallets came from Germany so they are metric) with a groove routed in two of the sides. I then took glass from the windows and slid them in and caulked it really well. The biggest problem with the roof so far has been that I didn't pitch it very steep and leaves and stuff get stuck on it unless I remember to hose it off.

Edit: I found some pictures of when I was building it.

 

[gtaus]

I also get a lot of food for our animals from places that are getting rid of it for one reason or another. The chickens don't care if there is a brown spot on their apple or if the pumpkin they are eating was cracked .

That is just fantastic! Sometimes, I wish I lived closer to town where it might make sense to develop those relationships to pick up waste food from restaurants. But I live outside of town and for my ~10 chickens, I cannot afford to drive into town every day to pick up "free" food. Depending on what vehicle I drive into town, it can cost me as much as $5.00 round trip. I only spend about $10.00 on chicken feed per month. So, it would not make sense for me to run into town to pick up "free" waste feed from the restaurants.

Although there are a few things on my never to feed to chickens list, over the years, I have become much more relaxed as to what they can eat in terms of quality of the food. If it won't kill them, I'll toss just about everything else into the chicken run. They eat what they eat and the rest gets mixed into the chicken run composting litter for the worms and bugs to eat. Then the chickens eat the worms and bugs.

That's really cool do you have the link to the videos. I would love to see other ideas on ways to do stuff with pallets.

Certainly. I posted a 2-part YouTube video series on how to make pallet wood Shake style shingles and siding a long time ago. That same guy has reposted his method about 5 months ago, consolidating those videos into one, and updating with some new improvements he is now using. I think you will find this video both instructional and entertaining. Well, I did...

I think your horizontal pallet wood siding came off looking great, but I would be interested in what you think of the Shake siding idea. My house siding is horizontal, and I don't know if a Shake style out building would match, but I sure do like the concept.

 

[gtaus]

The biggest problem with the roof so far has been that I didn't pitch it very steep and leaves and stuff get stuck on it unless I remember to hose it off.

I live in northern Minnesota. We typically have steep roofs to keep the snow off. I don't have any roof over my chicken run because it would just cost too much to build a cover that would support the snow load. Well, not a problem for me because I converted my entire chicken run into a composting system so it's better to have it exposed to the rain and snow. But I would like to build a greenhouse, someday. It's on my wish list.

Edit: I found some pictures of when I was building it.

Love those pictures. Thanks. It's great to see what other people have done and especially to hear comments on what they would do differently, if anything, like the slope of your roof where you would make it steeper to keep the leaves off.

 

[Theurbanhomestead]

That is just fantastic! Sometimes, I wish I lived closer to town where it might make sense to develop those relationships to pick up waste food from restaurants. But I live outside of town and for my ~10 chickens, I cannot afford to drive into town every day to pick up "free" food. Depending on what vehicle I drive into town, it can cost me as much as $5.00 round trip. I only spend about $10.00 on chicken feed per month. So, it would not make sense for me to run into town to pick up "free" waste feed from the restaurants.

Yeah that doesn't make a lot of sense. We have a good amount of people that need food around us that I end up sorting a lot of the stuff we get into people food and critter food. This whole project of getting free food actually started as getting day old bread from some places around and making sure it got to people that needed it. It quickly turned into both getting stuff from places that gave it to us and some dumpster diving in other places. It hurts to see how much stuff we waste that people can use.

Although there are a few things on my never to feed to chickens list, over the years, I have become much more relaxed as to what they can eat in terms of quality of the food. If it won't kill them, I'll toss just about everything else into the chicken run. They eat what they eat and the rest gets mixed into the chicken run composting litter for the worms and bugs to eat. Then the chickens eat the worms and bugs.

Yeah I have determined that the chickens will eat what they want for the most part. There are a few things that I will not put in there but not a lot at this point.

Certainly. I posted a 2-part YouTube video series on how to make pallet wood Shake style shingles and siding a long time ago. That same guy has reposted his method about 5 months ago, consolidating those videos into one, and updating with some new improvements he is now using. I think you will find this video both instructional and entertaining. Well, I did...

I think your horizontal pallet wood siding came off looking great, but I would be interested in what you think of the Shake siding idea. My house siding is horizontal, and I don't know if a Shake style out building would match, but I sure do like the concept.

I really liked that video. The look of the shake style is pretty cool. I think I will probably try that on whatever I end building next. The biggest problem with the way I did it was getting enough pallets that have longer boards so it looks better was a problem. Using the method he did would really get rid of that problem.

 

[gtaus]

Update on Cooking Old Layers

Well, not much to do about pallets, but Dear Wife cooked up those two old layers I butcher last weekend.

She used some of the chicken in a soup, letting it simmer for hours, and that came out pretty good. The chicken was a little chewy, but not bad at all. Stewing it for hours softened it up quite a bit. We both agreed that passed the test.

She also cooked some of the old chicken with vegetables and potatoes. Just a mix-mix of stuff. The veggies and potatoes came out fine, but the old layer meat was really tough. Failed on that test.

The final experiment was cooking some old chicken meat in the crock pot overnight on low heat, then putting it into a rice soup. That turned out the best. The chicken really benefited from the overnight crockpot cooking to make it more tender. Two thumbs up on overnight crockpot tenderizing!

Bottom line, we found at least two ways to use our old layer meat to make food we enjoy eating. It will be worth our time and effort to continue to harvest our old chickens when they are no longer productive egg layers. Is the meat as good as an eight-week-old Cornish Cross meat chicken? No, but it's plenty good in the soups/stews that we made.

BTW, I suggested using the new pressure cooker that I bought Dear Wife a few years ago that is still sitting in the closet, but she just does not want to use it. She likes the crockpot and it's easy to cook the chicken meat overnight to make it tender. There are benefits to both methods, but Dear Wife is the main cook and she decides what she wants to cook with. The crockpot overnight method really worked great, and she added some seasoning to the crockpot, and it all came out tasting great.

Dear Wife is a great cook.

 

[gtaus]

I still feel bad about having to junk my old Ford Explorer after the brakes went out. That was my primary pallet pickup vehicle for the past few years. I have really slowed down on picking up pallets since losing that vehicle, but life goes on.

I had to run an errand in town yesterday, so I hitched up my utility trailer to the Camry in case I found any good pallets. I ended up picking up another three ~7-foot-long pallets from the Bobcat dealership. Took them mainly for the 2X4's (without notches) because the 2X4's were in great shape. I'll probably just cut off the planks because they were in tough shape, many broken or split in half. That will make breakdown faster. Plus, I can use those broken planks in my burn ring where I am burning out a stump.

Well, now that I have to hitch up my trailer every time I make a pallet pick up run, I am looking for those longer pallets that I could never fit into the Explorer. I am building up a good supply of longer 2X4's for a future project.

 

[Theurbanhomestead]

This is a little different from a lot of the other pallet projects that I have seen on here so far but I have found with a little work you can make some pretty nice looking furniture with pallets. This does take a good bit of clean up work and a board planer. With all the work that goes into making it look good I'm not totally sure that its saving much money but I enjoy it. In the last picture you can see I found an end table that had been thrown in the trash and made a top for it.

 

[gtaus]

This is a little different from a lot of the other pallet projects that I have seen on here so far but I have found with a little work you can make some pretty nice looking furniture with pallets. This does take a good bit of clean up work and a board planer. With all the work that goes into making it look good I'm not totally sure that its saving much money but I enjoy it. In the last picture you can see I found an end table that had been thrown in the trash and made a top for it.

I personally love the look of wood furniture. It's hard to look at those pictures and think the wood came from pallets. You really have some talent making furniture like that.

I have been building up my tools and supplies to get to the point where I could do some kind of panel glue-up to make cutting boards, or tabletops. I already have a board planer that I had to buy many years ago for a renovation project on a house. Recently, I bought a couple sets of pipe clamps for the glue-up setup. I don't have a jointer, but might try a jointing jig on my table saw to get really close.

Most of my pallet projects are not nearly as finely crafted as your furniture. Well, I did make a couple of outdoor benches out of 2X6's. The first one, years ago, I used new store-bought wood. The second bench, with the same design, was made with reclaimed 2x6's. After a few years outside, they both look pretty much the same. For anyone interested in an easy outdoor furniture project, here is the video I watched to make my benches...