All things pallets!

I've kind of turned into a crazy person when it comes to pallets. While I'm driving I'm constantly on the lookout for pallets discarded behind stores in the alley. One time I almost lost it when I was at my families storage unit and I saw about six pallets just hanging out in a corner. Alas, I couldnt take any because right now I'm living in an apartment and I just dont have any where to store anything. Sigh. But come June I'll be out and living in a house, and then hellllooo garage. Yeaaah.

So I reaaaalllly wanted to make some shelves out of a pallet and I was having a hard time finding one. So what does my sweet wonderful and amazing hubster do for me? He goes to Home Depot and talks to the manager, and scores me a free pallet. Score!! So he lugs it home, I show him and my father in law a picture of how I want the shelves to look, and bam. I got me some pallet shelves. Im not actually going to be able to do too much of a tutorial on the making of the shelves since my father in law cut the pallet and put the shelves together (dang I need a garage!), but if anyone wants to know how to do these, I will find out how he did it and post about it later.

So here are my gorgeous shelves:

What I can tell you, is that I stained the shelves to give them a darker and more roughed up look. I used a dark walnut nonglossy stain. To stain them I used an old towel and dipped it in the stain. I then dry rubbed the stain onto the shelves. I started out brushing it really lightly so I didnt get them too dark, and then continued until I was happy with the color. You wont need to sand them because pallets are already a rough unfinished wood since they're used for work purposes.

Done! It took me less than an hour to get it all stained. Just a note, when you hang them, they will most likely need to be nailed into studs since they are pretty heavy. These are above my couch and I wouldnt want these coming down on my head!

Hope this inspires you to get creative!
Until next time....