160+ Used Pallet Project Tutorials & Ideas

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160 Used Pallet Project Tutorials Ideas

Used pallets are in abundance as they are often used once and then discarded, you can either pick them up for free or really cheaply for a small batch of them. All you need to do is reach out to some local businesses, and you should be in business! Most companies that get goods shipped in on pallets are looking to offload them for free.

UPDATE: I have actually made a whole load of things from used pallets. Given how freely available and abundant they are, I am actually wondering if there is a business or side business here. Just an idea for other like-minded DIY folks. BTW, if you fancy a more advanced DIY woodwork project, check out our post about free log cabin build plans!

This makes wooden pallets great for low-cost DIY projects. One word of advice with pallets is to ALWAYS get the HEAT TREATED pallets and not the chemically treated ones, you may be asking yourself ” well how do I know what pallet is what. The picture below shows you if a pallet has been heat-treated and chemically treated. You want to look for pallets marked with HT which stands for ‘heat treated’.


Pallet stamp to check if chemically or heat treated

FREE DIY Pallet Wood Flooring

Used wood pallet flooring

I have lost count of the number of DIY posts we have done about using wooden pallets for various projects (all of these posts have now been compiled into this huge pallet post now!), but for all the DIY pallet posts we have done it has honestly never occurred to me to use pallets for a real wood flooring…

Genuine hardwood flooring is very expensive and out of the reach of many of us, but everyone can get hold of free wooden pallets, sand them and treat them to make their own beautiful wooden flooring. My only concern would be for durability – pallets are usually made from softwood and I am not sure how much wear and tear a pallet floor would take, but once fitted and treated it might be absolutely fine, I guess it would depend on the room/environment the floor is fitted in. Check out the tutorial and additional photos: DIY Pallet Wood Flooring

(Photo from: A Building We Shall Go!)

Awesome Free DIY Pallet Decking

DIY pallet decking

We have posted previously about free DIY interior wood flooring made from recycled pallets. It was a very popular post, so when I stumbled across this awesome DIY pallet decking, I knew it would go down well too…

The thing I love the most about this DIY project is that the entire decking, including the framework, is made from recycled pallets. The only addition is the screws/nails used to fix the whole thing in place. Thought you couldn’t afford a nice wood deck? Think again! Check it out here: Awesome Free DIY Pallet Decking

(Photo from: Redo Redux)

Build A Canning Cupboard From Pallets

DIY pallet cupboard

It seems that everyone into canning or prepping loves those expensive rack-type storage systems with the shelves tilted forward, so that when you take out an item from the front, a new one slides down from the back… Here is a nice simple tutorial showing how to make something similar from free pallets (make sure you use heat treated pallets, not chemically treated). The tutorial isn’t the most detailed, but you can easily see from the photos how it is all put together.

This cupboard has the top shelf tilted forward, but it would be really easy to adapt it so other shelves also tilt forward.  You could build several of these canning cupboards for your food storage; all in all, a great storage solution at a great price – FREE! See: How To Build A FREE Canning Cupboard From Pallets

(Photo from: Old World Garden Farms)

Make A Bike Pallet Trailer For Less Than $10

DIY pallet bike trailer

Bike trailers are surprisingly useful and you can actually carry far, far more gear than you could carry on your person with a rucksack etc. You can also cover greater distances, faster.

A bike trailer makes particular sense if you don’t have a car/truck, or if you are prepping for a time when the gas will stop flowing and you’ll need alternative means of transporting goods and equipment. Don’t underestimate how effective a mountain bike and a trailer will be to transport goods/equipment in a SHTF scenario. Below is a simple tutorial that shows how to build a bike trailer from some pallets and old bike wheels. To be honest – it would be fairly easy to scavenge all the materials needed to build a bike trailer like this and make it for free. See: Make A Bike Pallet Trailer For Less Than $10

(Photo from: cmachia via Instructables)

Recycle a Wooden Pallet to Use for Shoe/Boot Storage

Pallet shoe rack

You could, of course, clean yours up a bit better than this. A lick of paint might work well. Depends on where you are putting it I guess… This is perfectly good for the garage or shed!

What do you think? No instruction required really…

How To Build A Low-Cost Rabbit Hutch From Pallets

DIY pallet rabbit hutch

This great little DIY rabbit hutch would be excellent for keeping rabbits as pets and breeding rabbits to eat. There are two types of people reading this post – one is going yum, yum and that other is mortified about the idea of eating pet rabbits! Your motivation for keeping rabbits doesn’t matter, as long as they are cared for and kept in decent sized hutch. Actually, if you were into breeding rabbits, you could build several of these cheap pallet hutches.

If you want to build your own DIY rabbit hutch, check out the link below for the build tutorial. Although any competent DIYer could probably build a hutch like this from the photo above anyway. See: How To Build A Low-Cost Rabbit Hutch From Pallets

(Image from: Little Tassie Prepper)

Make A Chicken Coop From Some Pallets

DIY pallet chicken coop
If you’ve got the space, you should keep some chickens, simple as that!  They are low cost, low maintenance and they recycle your waste food into eggs each day and they can also provide you with meat if you breed them. They are perfect for homesteaders, preppers and anyone wanting to be more self-sufficient.  If space is limited, you can even keep just two or three chickens in a small coop like the one above.

This is a great DIY chicken coop made from some old pallets. This is a great low-cost project, with the only real cost being for the chicken wire.  Whilst it is only a small chicken coop, there is no reason why you couldn’t build a larger version for more chickens.

If you would like to see how to build this chicken coop, head over to the Shed and Beyond website via the link: Make A Chicken Coop From Some Pallets

(Photo from: Shed and Beyond)

The 5 Pallet Livestock Feeder

Pallet cattle feeder

The other pallet hacks (I’ve featured either here or on the Facebook page) have been really popular, so here’s another one.

Make a feeder for your livestock with five pallets. No instructions, but you get the design from the photo. Pretty easy to build and you should have no problem picking up the pallets for free.

Free Pallet Chicken Coop Tutorial

Pallet chicken coop

Now as you can see from the photo, this chicken coop is HUGE! It is actually 11×12  feet, I am not sure exactly how many chickens you could house in a coop this size, but it is a lot…

This chicken coop is made entirely from free reclaimed pallets and the estimated cost of building the coop with new timber is around $1000! A word of caution – it is super easy to pick up free pallets, but if you are growing food or keeping animals in them, you want to make sure they are heat treated and not chemically treated… You don’t want any of those nasty chemicals leaching out into your food chain.

If you want to keep and house a lot of chickens, this tutorial shows you how to build this large chicken coop for very, very little money. For others, it is great to see what can be archived with almost no budget and I guess you could scale it down if you were after a smaller chicken coop. See: Judy’s Free Pallet Chicken Coop

(Photo from: BYC via Backyard Chickens)

No Fuss Wood Pallet Gardening

DIY wood pallet garden

When I first saw this concept of wood pallet gardening, I was like – that’s such an obvious thing to do, how come I have never thought of doing it… We are surrounded by haulage companies who pay to dispose of pallets and are only too happy to give them away free of charge. Just make sure you only use heat treated pallets for growing food in, the link below show how to tell if pallets have been heat-treated or chemically treated…

Seriously, no matter what scale of gardening/growing you are doing, using pallets in the way to create ordered, low maintenance raised beds, has got to be a winner, although this won’t work for crops such as potatoes. Check out the post below for a whole series of posts on pallet gardening like this.

No Fuss Wood Pallet Gardening

(Photo from: One Hundred Dollars A Month)

Make A Free Standing Pallet Herb Garden (Tutorial)

Vertical pallet herb garden

We have pots of herbs growing everywhere and with the kids riding around on bikes and scooters, they can get in the way or get damaged…

This DIY pallet herb garden project from ‘DIY Show Off’ looks awesome! It looks great and it saves a huge amount of space. I think you could even hang or attach it to a wall a bit higher up. It’s also great as you could have it right by the kitchen door, so you can just lean out cut some herbs and carry on cooking.

A word of caution – it is super easy to pick up free pallets, but if you are growing food in one, you want to make sure it is heat treated and not chemically treated… You don’t want any of those nasty chemicals leaching out into your food-chain. See: Free Standing Pallet Herb Garden

(Photo from: DIY Show Off)

How to Make a Better Strawberry Pallet Planter

Pallet strawberry planer

The reason this planter is “better” than other pallet planters is that it isn’t made from just one pallet, one pallet planters and almost always leaned against a wall or some may be bolted to something to stop it from blowing away. Plus this planter will look so much better in a garden and you could grow a lot more strawberrys with this design. See: How to Make a Better Strawberry Pallet Planter

Picture credits: lovelygreens.com

How To Make A Beautiful Potting Bench From Pallets

DIY pallet potting bench

Having a potters bench is pretty handy. It can hold your pots at the right height and to make this even better I would add hooks and hang some tools you might need that day.

This project is really simple to do and has step by step picture and text instructions. Make the most out of your old pallets and get a great potters bench for pretty much FREE. See here: How To Make A Beautiful Potting Bench From Pallets

(Picture Credit: bhg.com)

19+ Planters & Raised Beds Made From Free Pallets

DIY garden pallet projects

I have lost count of the number of DIY posts we have done about dismantling and reusing shipping pallets. Wooden pallets are the ultimate free resource for DIYers. They are plentiful and available for free if you know where to look. Use the K.W.N search facility and search PALLETS to see all the other posts we have done.

There are 19+ tutorials showing how to build pallet garden planters and raised beds. Personally, I love the simplicity of the vertical pallet planters and the basic throw a pallet on the floor, raised beds, but some of the other more technical ones are beautiful too. Check them out: 19+ Planters & Raised Beds Made From Free Pallets

(Image from: Mixer To Mower)

29 Cool Recycled Pallet Projects

DIY pallet projects

Pallets are amazing, that being said I have found 29 pallet projects you might enjoy tackling this spring. Pallets are so versatile and can pretty much be made into anything if nothing else pallets ( heat treated only ) can be used for emergency firewood.

All of these projects shouldn’t take more than a few hours to a weekend to complete. Get them here: 29 Cool Recycled Pallet Projects

107 Used Pallet Projects

100+ used pallet DIY projects

We have featured loads and loads of DIY pallet projects before (use the K.W.N search facility and search: pallets), but they have mostly been tutorials on how to make a single project from some old pallets.

This post is different, as the link below contains a huge selection of DIY pallet projects, I doubt there is a bigger list of DIY pallet projects anywhere online. Unfortunately, there are not any instructions on how to complete each project, but to be honest, most are self-explanatory, you can see from the photo what needs to be done and how it is used. Check out the DIY projects here: 107 Used Pallet Projects & Ideas (link currently not working).

(Image from: Wikipedia)
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