Over the years, we fed ours and reader’s passion for practical things made of shipping pallets, with examples of the very best, most stylish versions we could find of pallet beds, sofas, side tables, steps, even a version of Le Corbusier’s iconic club chair. Gradually, novel ideas for pallet began to drop off as the diy-universe reached a saturation point, along with our interest.

We’ve found it piqued again with the discovery of 1001 Pallets, a site crammed full of ideas for upcycling pallets. The only downside is the irritating     watermark embedded in their images, even ones we know to have been published first on other websites.

1001 Pallets
1001 Pallets

The way around them and the site’s somewhat clunky design: their excellent Pinterest features pallet creations under 29 categories from lighting to huts and cabinets and makes for some swell browsing.

Either way, you’ll find a trove of ideas of ideas, including reader’s submissions, best ways to dismantle a pallet,  how to determine pallet safety

1001 Pallets
1001 Pallets

…and some useful tutorials

1001 Pallets
1001 Pallets

The chair, top, found at 1001 Pallets Pinterest has renewed our pallet imagination, and reignited our passion for corrugated tin…

If you’ve found illumination, joy, or inspiration in this post, please consider supporting Improvised Life. It only takes a minute to make a secure donation that helps pay our many costs. A little goes a long way towards helping Improvised Life continue to live ad-free in the world.

Support Improvised Life ♥

4 replies on “1001 Pallet’s Trove of Ideas and Info

  1. Pallets come in several levels of quality. Some are very high quality but most are terrible. Building with pallets is, in the words of Julia Child, “…self limiting…” Of course, she was referring to the crazy idea of trying to minimize dish washing at the expense of the food, but you get the idea. If you want to build something nice, usually you’re better off starting without a bunch of weird self-imposed constraints. If you’re building a chicken coop, you have no money, and lots of time, don’t care how it looks, then pallets are a good option.

    For the enthusiasts out there, I recommend you get a pallet and take it apart. The boards split and there’s some unholy power that holds in those spiral shank nails. Their heads are generally small and the steel is of low quality so they’re easy to tear off. After demolition, the wood is generally of poor quality, splintery, and difficult to work with.

    My experience isn’t universal but I suspect that the stuff pictured on the interwebs isn’t usual, either.

    If you want to make something, give yourself a chance at success and buy some proper lumber. You’ll find that it’s hard enough to express yourself in this medium…

  2. Hi Kevin, what you say is true…and NOT, to my mind. The configuration of pallets has proven a ready-made modular ‘part’ for many creations, many of which we’ve featured here. Painted, they CAN look pretty stylish. Taking a pallet apart can be a good way to begin understanding a basic form, and that the size of the boards can be used for many things (i.e. sometimes DEconstruction is a great way to learn). Some of the wood in pallets IS just fine. And using them is a valiant attempt at repurposing a resource.

  3. Hi! Thanks a lot for featuring our website, we appreciate this honest review and we are glad to see that you are piqued again with pallet creations. We are also always amazed by the ideas sent by our community of Crafters, they are some incredible things made from pallets! 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *