I recently brought home some wooden pallets from work in hopes of making.... stuff. Drew Carrie gave me a book for Christmas that had a bunch of pallet projects in it. Over the past week or so I finally completed my first project: the children's picnic table pictured above.
At some point I hope to write out my own design and plans. I actually found these plans on google. They were pretty good, but I have different size pallets, and I did run across a couple slight problems. I am pretty happy with the results, though, if I do say so myself.
Ideally you should be able to make the top and seats from one pallet. Then you just need to buy 2x4's to make the legs, the seat connectors (2), and the middle bracing board. I already had some brand new 2x4's that were abandoned in a storage unit, so all I had to buy were the screws and the paint. Anna and Jane picked out the color (and did a super job!).
I didn't keep track of my time. I hope to do that at some point. I just wanted to try to make one first. So, I started out by breaking down the pallet (and breaking not just a few boards), then making the top, cutting the other boards, screwing it all together, and sanding with a belt sander. We had some Kilz primer, and I put that on very thick to cover holes and cracks and whatnot. The pic then shows it with one coat of yellow indoor/outdoor enamel paint.
It really wasn't all that difficult to make. Fortunately I had some pallets with thicker boards for the seats, because I don't think I would trust the thin ones that the top is made out of. I'd like to make some more, but I need to wait until it warms up, because finding the right weather to paint in probably took more time than anything else.
Now I may see about making a wine rack. We'll see.