DIY Pallet Shelves

I haven't really jumped onto the pallet craziness bandwagon. The main reason being: I have no pallets.

However, while my mom was here visiting (she was here for 2 weeks!) we found a pallet by the dumpster and decided to try and make something out of it.

After perusing Pinterest for a while, we decided to try and make some shelves.

Problem. I have no tools. Okay, that's a lie, I have a drill and a hammer and some nails. And screwdrivers. And some lame pliers. But that's about it. So off we went to get a handsaw.

Okay, I'm going to *TRY* to show you how I made these. "Try" being the operative word. I have never made anything like this, so I was so so grateful to have my mom there to help me out.

Here's the lovely pallet I found:

We had to PRY those boards off of there. It was hard and we were really sweaty by the end of it. But we did get a good workout!

After we had pried them off, I cut them with my handsaw. For one shelf I actually just left it the length they are: 30 inches. For the second shelf, I cut it down 5 inches for a more staggered look once they were hung up. Then I cut some small triangles for support for each shelf.

Next I spray painted all the pieces white. Once they were dry I nailed them together. For the longer shelf I was able to nail the triangle supports in fine, but for the smaller shelf I had to use wood glue. I'm not going to use these as bookshelves or anything heavy like that, so I figured that would be fine.

Clamps were so useful! If you need to glue wood together, get clamps!!

Next you need to decide how you want to hang them up. Since I knew I was going to use these shelves as more decoration than utility, I decided to put 2 combed-like picture hangers on the backs of each one. 

Oh, and here's the handsaw my mom bought for me. I'm gonna get some serious muscles using this thing.

Here's how they looked with the picture hangers nailed into the back:

And there ya have it! (Oh, use a level when you put up your shelves so they don't look lopsided!) 

DIY Pallet Shelves!!

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