FLOOR MOUNTED "FLOATING" SHOE RACK

My sister in law moved in with us a while ago and the amount of shoes in the apartment increased slightly.  Living in Hawai'i, it is customary to not wear shoes in the house.  While many places have a dedicated area to put your footwear, our apartment does not.  So the footwear piles up by the door.  We have to carry any shoes or slippers we are not wearing in the near future to our room for storage.  There wasn't really a good spot in the second bedroom, so I decided to put something together for her shoes.

I had some leftover 3/4" maple plywood that my co-worker gave me a while ago from his own home projects.  I was limited by the specific space in the room that I wanted to put it, but fortunately for me, the "shoe rack" fit perfectly and used up all the wood without having any wasted pieces.  The OCD side of me always enjoys it when this happens.

I say "shoe rack" because the middle shelf space is a little tall for shoe storage, but I liked how it turned out.  I went back and forth on how to do the legs, and decided to go with this semi floating look.  I don't know if I am that crazy about it, but I like it enough not to change this one.

DIY PALLET BED STAND

My wife likes to read before going to sleep.  So naturally she keeps books by her side of the bed.  After getting married we had no furniture other than our bed, so all the books just end up on the floor by her side of the bed.  Being the OCD person that I am, it bothered me a little bit.  That is what led me to make the following bed stand.  If I did it again, I would do some minor changes to the design, but no more books on the floor.  Success!  

Disclaimer:  There are a lot more books now :)

 

DIY PALLET SIGN

Every time my wife went shopping at Brandy Melville, she always asked if we could buy one of their wooden signs.  This one stood out to her the most: <3 is my religion

So instead of spending 35 dollars, I made my own! :)  After printing and cutting out the heart outline and letters, it was pretty simple.  Just apply chalkboard paint everywhere else and chalk in the heart whatever color you want! I thought it ended up pretty cool, and apparently so did our apartment visitors below: 

DIY PALLET ENTERTAINMENT CENTER

It was about Christmas time and I wanted to make something special for my wife whom I had just married.  I wanted it to be a surprise, so once again I was pressed for time.  It was supposed to be for the bedroom to put things on ( I noticed it was getting a little cluttered on the cardboard boxes we were using...).  I measured the height to the mirror and the width under the mirror to get just the right dimensions.  I had started to get my pallets from a solar panel company that always had free pallets in the back of their shop.  These pallets were clean and not falling apart. Also, a nice long one would show up on the pile every once in a while.  This pallet didn't have nails for 5 feet, which is amazing for someone who likes to put together pallet creations.  I made it first without the middle support, but after consulting my mom who was around at the time ( I do all my pallet projects at their home since they actually have a yard) I decided to support the middle a little more.  This was good because the moment my wife saw it she said, "Entertainment center!" So... instead of a bedroom item it became an entertainment center and the center piece was essential to hold up the television.  It worked out nicely, except I think if I do it again, I will make provisions to hide all those cables.

DIY PALLET CLASSIC COFFEE TABLE

Along with the bookshelves, my fiance (now wife) and I made a coffee table for her apartment.  We were working with some not so clean pallets at the time, and so we were kind of picky about which pallet to use.  The pallet we ended up using was nice and clean,  lighter in color and had a lot of fuzzy wood on the surface.  We chopped the ends off to make it the perfect width.  We used one of the boards that we cut off to fill in the two gaps left on the top.  For the legs we cut the supporting pieces that had been already cut off into shorter pieces to give us the height we wanted.  We did end up using supporting brackets for the legs, and in the future I think I will find a better way to do the legs with just the pallet itself.  However, the final look with the legs is pretty nice.  I did have to sand it down for a long long time to get it smooth.  It was worth it though, and our coffee table is still in our living room looking good!

DIY PALLET VALENTINE'S DAY GIFT

Sometimes, inspiration is brought on by haste.  This was one of those times.  During tax season, my wife works on weekends.  On one of those weekends before Valentine's Day I sneaked over to my parent's house to make her a surprise Valentine's Day box.  With only a few precious hours, a lonely hinge, some chalkboard paint and chalk I produced the pretty project you see below.  A quick stop to pick up some Hershey's Kisses and Hugs, and my Valentine's Day box of kisses and hugs was ready to go! Definitely a Saturday morning well spent!

DIY PALLET FIRST PROJECT: BOOKSHELVES!

   The first project I did with pallets was the classic coffee table and two book holders.  It was my fiance's idea (now my wife:).  She just moved to Oahu from the Big Island and didn't have too much stuff in her apartment.  So we set about to make it happen.

   It was pretty simple to do the bookshelves.  We simply cut a pallet in half and sanded the outside.  Then we took two cross pieces from another pallet and made a bottom for the shelves.  To be honest they are really heavy, and maybe in the future will be used as planters (we can't have plants in our apartment).  Right now they sit on the floor and hold a couple of books and magazines.  Pretty simple and easy to make!