Well I'm at it again.
This time I need a new wood shed and had a lot of good pallets on hand.
The walls will be built the same way I built the Pallet Fence.
Last fall I had the need for
a new shed to store my garden tractor in.
Since I had a large number of
used wooden pallets on hand
I decided to put them to a good
use.
The following pictures show the end results.
"The Pallet Shed"
A good example of Building with
pallets
This page was last updated on May 12, 2013
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The floor consisted
of four 4 ft x 4 ft pallets.
The footings were used bricks. The old shed in the background is scheduled for demolition.
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Each wall used two pallets on the lower sections. |
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The front was made with one pallet cut into to sections making the door. |
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For the top front
I split two pallets and overlapped them
to the lower ones and did the same for the upper sides. |
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The roof was made
using four pallets.
I had to use four 2x4 stringers here. The only new lumber used in the shed. |
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I took several damaged
pallets apart and
used the boards to overlap the spacing in the pallets. |
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I used a part sheet of used plywood to make the floor solid. |
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A pallet was used for the ramp. |
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I was checking to
see if the tractor fit the shed
which of course it did. |
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It's just about finished. |
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Trim boards are
now installed.
They were parts of pallets and some used lumber I had laying around. |
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The door was also made using a pallet. |
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I gave it a coat
of paint and extended the ramp in the spring.
The ramp is hinged so that it can be folded out of the way. |
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I had to hinge this
section to save my head while
driving the tractor in and out. |
| I've heard comments that building with pallets is a bad idea because the wood used in them is not #1 grade and they will rot out quite quickly. Well this wood shed has gone through 5 Canadain winters and shows no signs of rot. It's as good today as it was when it was built. |
Lyn
Pierce of Leland North Caroline has started to build a Pallet Shed
He
got the idea from my Pallet Shed.
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floor pallets together |
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and has to tie the top pallets together. Then comes the roof. |
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The finished product. |
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coop using pallets and had the following to say about it. "I found your website about a
year ago - this time - and it was really just what I was looking for.
I was ordering baby chicks in the spring and planning to use my summer
to build their new coop - and seeing your projects sort of solidified the
possibility in my mind of making it out of pallets and recycled stuff.
I had no building experience - but your pictures - and a lot of books
- helped me to put the thing together. This summer I am planning
on expanding their arrangement.
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| Pete from Canton, MO USA sent in these
pictures showing how he tries to save the environment.
He had the following to say: "I love what you have done using pallets. I have been using them for quite sometime and am amazed at how much use they are. I have attached some pic's of some of my structures. My latest craze is using pallets and old large satellite dishes for roofs. Also have used old truck canopies for the same purpose. We freecycle a lot and get these items for free. I got the siding for a friend who was having new put on their house and I took the old stuff." |
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Tony Utterback from Arab Alabama has also built a shed
using pallets as the main building component
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| Ken Hoh of Walton, KY. has used pallets for some years
now as a building material.
He just finished the chicken coup shown below and is planning a foot bridges across the back of the ponds on his property. He says that both ponds are triangular and stream fed. So crossing the tail can be tricky. He is going to make a pillar of 4 foot pallets and use the 12 foot long x 4 foot wide pallets as a base for a foot bridge. They should make nice fishing platforms too. His total cost for this coup coup was $6 - H didn't have any door hinges. |
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This shed was built by Peter Glendinning
It holds 3 1/2 cords of wood. Once the roof is shingled he is ready for winter. |
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| This shed was build by Tom Anthony, Kodiak Alaska.
He had the following to say about his shed. "I got to say that your idea for the pallet wood shed is great. Here in Kodiak it can be tough to keep your wood dry. I just completed our woodshed based on your idea, with a few modifications. My total cost was roughly $50 for some hardware, and 2X 4's. Not bad considering the cost of lumber here. I did happen to score pretty good at the local landfill for lumber though. Anyway, I will attach a picture of the new addition, still needs a door. In the picture is my wife Thea and our bird dog Maggie." |
| This play fort was built by Keith E. Hyndman, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania,
USA.
Keith had the following to say about it. "Not one piece of lumber was purchased, all of the framing came for pallets, the flooring and walls...pallets, the roof sheathing was pieced together from old plywood cabinet doors. Roll roofing was some left over given to me by a co-worker. The wooden ladder was given to me by my neighbor. Cinder block footers, given to me by my neighbor. Hope this helps inspire others to create things from recycled materials."
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Another Wood Shed built from pallets
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Just wanted to show you the product of wondering around on the internet
one day searching for ideas about a wood shed from wood pallets.
I had such a good time building this shed, but it was a bit of a challenge.
My shed is built on the edge of a ravine, so there were some problems to
be worked out.
I was trying to build this shed a cheaply as possibly, but had to haul in 6 ton of gravel, thus most of my expense. And, by the time was all said and done, I had to paint the shed to look presentable to my property. Any way, thank you for the ideas and inspiration. The job from concept to completion took be about six weeks. Of course I did not work on the project every day and some days I only worked an hour or so. Again, thank you for your ideas and I now have about 2 chords of wood safely stored with room for another cord if I so choose. Ken |
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| A recent visitor to this site sent me the following pictures and
comments
"I recently I was building a new lean-to onto the out building for
lawnmower storage. I had sticker shock from the price of concrete
here and looked for another option. As we a big problem with termites here
in south Georgia, I didn't want wood touching the ground. What we
found was a used pallet dealer that had a load of plastic pallets.
The attached photos show what we came up with. It has really worked
out very well. I enjoyed browsing your site. A lot of good
ideas there.
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| Mike Millson of Jackson TN has built two small projects using pallets.
He had the following to say about them. "I thought I would send you some pictures of two small projects I
have made with pallets. Being a University of Tennessee Master Gardener,
I needed a good place to pot, repot, start seeds, etc. I made this
potting bench for this purpose and used some left over exterior paint to
bump it up a little.
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He thought he would try one like I did and his results were pretty good. |
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The Pallet Bench
| Mike Millson, Jackson, TN who is the coordinator at one of
the Jackson Community Gardens wanted to add some park-like seating.
Where else could he get basically free benches other than using pallets. So he bought one 8-ft pressure treated 2x4, cut it up for the legs and then cut the pallets to fit the design he wanted. |
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It measures a bit more than a meter by meter. 41" by 45" |
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| Glen Blackie, Perth, Scotland sent me the following
three pictures and had the following to say about his shed.
"I had the opportunity back in January 2010 to start a stockpile of pallets no longer required and in a variety of states and sizes. After seeing the constructions on your site I was inspired to try my hand at building my own. Although my father has been doing diy and wood working for most of my life I have not quite had the same experience and knowledge. Not put off by this I thought why not! First I dug the ground flat. This involved shifting a fair tonnage of soil. In January and February I had to chip at the topsoil which had frozen due to our worst weather in decades. I used some hefty pallets as a base and constructed
the walls two pallets high leaving a pallet width gap
As my girlfriend Sarah and I live in the countryside
and have a open fireplace all offcuts went straight
A green paint was purchased and that was plastered
on the walls. As can be seen by the photos the beams are intentionally
sticking out, so that next year Sarah can hang some flower baskets.
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| The idea of building a home hangout down the garden
was born in November 2009, after many seasons spent outside sitting around
an open fire playing musical instruments jamming with my friends, we decided
it was just getting too cold for it and dreamt up the idea of building
something using recycle materials. We'd all heard of people building sheds
from pallets and so we jumped on the net and had a good look around.
After stumbling across your site amongst others it was a done deal, my brother in law Tom works for a camping shop warehouse and as such had a plentiful supply of pallets coming through the doors every week, he had a word with his boss and we suddenly had 206 pallets to hand. In the March of this year (2010) I hired a van to collect the pallets and spent a day with Tom and my good friend Russ shifting that lot, back breaking work but so rewarding as well, just knowing what was coming. Since March I've been busy building the ultimate shed
at the bottom of my garden, the base is made from pallets, the walls are
made from pallets, the roof is pallets covered with grade 3 OSB board,
all the cladding is pallets and I've paid out a little more than most on
the
I was donated a front door by a friend and my windows came from my neighbour who was having new uPVC windows installed, bit of a result really. Floorboards were picked up from a local reclamation yard, I had to pay for those too but they were pretty cheap to be fair. I have been pleasantly surprised by the results, especially so as I had very little wood working skills before the build and was not even a very keen DIYer, now, I'm a changed man :-) I hope you enjoy the pics and feel free to add anything
here to your site - well done and hopefully together we can start inspiring
more people to build with pallets, rather than see the wood just end
Kelly Hutchinson
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| Fnally after 13 months, yesterday I the Pallet shed.
I've attached some more pics of it as it looks now, enjoy, I certainly did building it. Finished all the interior cladding and sanding the floorboards |
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| I originally wanted a wood burning stove inside, but unfortunately
the fire risk was just too high and after all my hours spent building it,
last thing I wanted was to watch it turn
to ashes. So instead I bought a little low cost eco electric heater and now project a fire onto the wall instead... feels warm even if it isn't with 84 inches of flames on the wall. |
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| Sofa's and chairs all in, walls need something now to make them feel homely... but not too much, I’m not hiding that beautiful pallet wood! |
| Carla Bennett submitted these pictures and story through her blog http://www.limousinlife.com/?p=558 |
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| Winter is on it's way again and the annual task of collecting wood
starts in September. Storage has always been a problem chez nous. We tried
storing it in the garage. This kept it good and dry but shifting meter
lengths of wood from out of the garage to cut and
then reloading it back into the garage was hard work and made a big Mess! Then we tried stacking the wood in a big pile on the grass next to the drive and covered it with plastic. It was a constant battle with the weather, preventing the cover from blowing off and battling with it in the pouring rain. Last year we had a disaster when the covering came off and the wood got soaking wet. It was clear that we needed a better solution. The wood needed to be close to the house and kept dry with something more reliable. Although the garden is quite big there isn't much scope for a large shed but we came up with an idea whilst clearing brambles between the conifers at the back of the house. Meter lengths of wood can be kept dry by stacking as square as possible and placing something which covers the top only. It's not necessary to completely cover the whole stack, in fact it's more beneficial if you don't, as air can cirulcate and continue drying the wood. We decided to stack the wood between the conifer trees. It was dead space not being used for anything other than growing weeds and had the added benefit of the trunks supporting the wood either side. Each stack was covered by a piece of black polythene across the top and planks to weigh it down. So that was the storage solution for meter lengths but what about cut wood? Keeping cut wood covered with plastic is more of a battle as it's difficult to stack squarely and if it blows off, you can't burn it until it drys out – which is very difficult to do in the middle of winter. So after considering forking out hundreds of euros for a fancy shed, I discovered a groovy blog about a couple from Nova Scotia who used old pallets to build their shed. It hadn't occured to me before. I'd used pallets for making compost bins but never considered making a structure out of them. We needed to store about 4 cubic meters of cut wood at a time so the shed didn't need to be that big. First then - get a shed load (no pun intended) of pallets. I often found the odd one or two at E LeClerc in St Junien and occassionally at Gamme Vert but I needed about 12 pallets. After putting a post on a French forum, I'd managed to get 8 roof tile pallets from a builder. Then I spotted a school being extended in the small village of St Cyr about 20 minutes from us and asked the Mason if I could take some of his pallets. Our chief engineer, designer and technician was Steve. The base was of course Pallets to keep the wood off the ground and air circulating all round. Using his trusty chainsaw, Steve cut small pieces off the pallets so that they would lock together at the corners to make the structure stronger. Pallets were put in place to start the structure. |
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| Then he hammered 3 stakes in the ground, this would support
each side and the back. |
Once all the pallets were stacked into place, we used plastic zip ties to reinforce the joints and attach it to the stakes. Steve also fitted a piece of old Angle Iron across the front along the top for extra strength and also creating a handy hanger for my garlic! |
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| Now for the roof - 2 sheets of corrugated sheeting from
Roberts in Rochechouart - much cheaper than UPVC or other plastic stuff.
After designing a makeshift roof rafter from an old plank of wood to give
a good angle for water run off, the sheets were screwed
into place and the roof fixed on. |
This was a good opportunity for collecting rain water. So using an old piece of piping with a slit cut into it along it's length, was pushed onto the roofing sheets and then a piece of old inner tube was attached to the end and dropped into a barrel. |
| Voila - the cheapest wood shed in France - €36 euros to be
exact.
The only adaptation we have made is to add a front using pallets again, so that cut wood and be thrown into it like a big bucket. |
| Traci Perg from Oklahoma City built this chicken coop using pallets
and other material that was recycled.
The following pictues show the start of construction and the end results. To view a much more complete picture gallary of this project go to the following site. Everything from the first pallet to moving the coop to a new site is here. https://picasaweb.google.com/tgperg/ChickenCoop# https://picasaweb.google.com/tgperg/CoopMoving# |
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| Measurements based on what supplies I'd gathered. | Lazy way to move pallets. |
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| Here we've chosen a shady spot in the yard, laid
out
the pallets and nailed them together and laid 3/4" plywood on top for the floor. |
We've built the back wall out of stacked pallets and the two side walls halfway up. Since the pallets can only be nailed together on the sides with supports, it was really important to nail the plywood over in a way that tied everything together. We used 3/4" exterior grade plywood for this too, making sure that it overlapped the bottom pallets about two inches and could be nailed into it, as well as the wall framing. We also made sure that no seams of the plywood sheets fell on the joint between two pallets. |
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| Here you see exterior sheathing on the bottom half of the side walls and the beginning of the front wall. We've used pallets halfway up, then framed in the door and space for two windows. | Just a little bit further along with the wall and door framing. There's a lot of splicing here because we were using only recycled material as much as possible. |
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| Here both windows are on in the front, and the east wall framing is up. The coop has an angled roof, so the top pallets had to be cut on an angle and have another 2x4 nailed in place on the sloping side. |
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| Okay, all the framing is done on the front, and we've got one of our 12 ft top plates that ties everything together. | Here we're working on the framing for the west wall. It works just the same. |
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| We only used one pallet on the sides. Since the space between the end of the first pallet and the back wall was less than two feet, we simply used the top plate to span that space. | We used packing pallets from a local lawn mower shop to do the roof joists. These were the side shipping pallets from ZTR mowers. It was just after the primary elections and we got permission from the city zoning department to gather all those waste political signs. Here we've nailed them to the bottom of these roof joists and will fill in in the middle. |
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| Better view of the roof. | Another view of the east wall with framing |
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| A different view, same point in construction. | Here you can see the back of the roof with the signs lining the inside partially completed. |
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| Here's Ms. Pac trying to decide if little strips of silicone caulk are edible. They are not, but chickens are dumb. We took a quick break to clean up the caulk. | Nest boxes full of hay and ready to use. |
| Christopher Murphy sent in the following pictures of his pallet
shed.
He had the following to say about his shed. "I only have $150 into the shed so far. Everything was recycled or given to me on craigslist for the project :) I started with the floor 3 pallets wide and 4 deep. Then added the walls 2 pallets tall. Got the usb from my father in law for free. It was scrap from the lumberyard he works at. The only thing I purchased was the nails, and 2x6s for the roof. I just finished the roof the other day. I found 5 bundles of shingles for free and got dented drip edge from my father in law for free :) . I am currently ready to side the shed and trim it out. Then build the front doors and I will be done :) been a long almost year long project so far.. but its getting close!" |
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He had access to 4 meters by 2 meters pallets which he says made the construction much easier then with the smaller ones. |
| Well, I have to dismantle and remove again to make
me a stock of boards (10 cm wide, 16mm thick, 4 m long) is longer to remove
the twisted nails and nailed to the air gun at the construction of pallets.
I start with "bard" horizontally inside and in this way I create a partition
that is then filled with an insulation thickness of 7.5 cm or poles, with
sheep's wool mixed with hair. This mix I found in mattresses (not soiled)
on which our old and slept until the 70s, equipped the bedding of our homes.
So "dismantling" of the seams and recovery of wool (mask recommended).
It is then aerated and "treated" with an anti-mite spray and then returned
to the air. Dubbing obtained is then filled with this yarn and I added
a few more "balls" of moth acquired by conscience. I think I also use this
process when I will step "house" but I also bales of straw, there will
certainly use in the isolation of the next construction. Many documents
and many techniques already exist on the subject to make it necessary to
speak here.
In this case the openings made ??in the "walls" are easy to perform and will be equally important for those of a habitat. Windows recovery again, may agree. Looking at these photos, it is easy to make the finding with simple pallet recovery, nails, some tools and materials could not be more basic, it is possible to build a very low-cost housing that is sustainable, respectful of its environment, the format suited to the needs of future home builders. Pallets so prepared, before assembly, or as and when they rise, are almost similar to the timber frame panels prefabricated factories. Only sections of the poles are different and the cladding and the isolation mode. Nothing prevents the structure built to dress with panels of OSB 3 outside and inside, then the bracing that will strengthen not forgetting, however, increase the number of posts during construction. When I turn to the construction of a housing made ??of pallets larger models, I will not fail to contribute photographs and description of the procedure. I will remain in the use of simple solutions and the least possible cost. This type of method of construction is already widespread and I does nothing more than what many have already done so, in fact some do not make a mistake by creating as in the Emmaus community, a position technical manager, a "Mr. Pallet" responsible for setting up this method of construction for their shelters with the study of self-construction of small houses for the poor. For my part I had started long ago modeled on what I had seen before in the surrounding countryside to achieve in 90 years, a barn of 35 m2 with non-returnable pallets recovered at high levels in a craftsman the building near me. To this shelter on clay I used for the supporting structure 4 pallets and the "frame" only two pallets. Of course for a "habitat" it will provide for the creation of a single wood floor and still nothing complicated. In all six pallets for an interior space of approximately 14 m2. It was necessary to disassemble many others for the recovery of boards and poles and I have with this, a very large stock of wood in all sections. It only cost me the cement and sand to make concrete pads and the purchase of nails. The pallets are free, only cost me the fuel I put in my van which I harness a large trailer to transport them. It is with this wood I could fix nearly 20 m2 of the roof of my house, providing rafters and battens, slates have been recovered during demolition, so all in recovery and free, except the hooks of course, not bad? |
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| Jean-Christophe But from France really likes to build with pallets. This is his second project. This one is a horse sheletr and is 7 meters long by 4 meters wide. He is now in the planning stages of a small house that he could live in. |
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| Olivier Longuet from Galway, Ireland wanted to share his project
with everyone. This website inspired him so
much to make his own shed using pallets and reclaimed timber (for the roof). He started slowly last year and pretty much finished it in September. To view more of his work go to http://olivierlonguet.blogspot.ie/2012/06/project-pallets.html |
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| Michael McDonald, Bend, Oregon sent me these pictures
of his Pallet Shed. He had the following to say about it.
"I've been looking at the pallet projects on your website for sometime and want to share some photos of my own project that I finished a month ago. It's tiny and basic but I managed to make it with almost all recycled or repurposed materials. The roofing material and the clear poly-carbonate front windows were purchased retail. I probably spent less than $150.00 bucks for the whole thing." |
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| Dave from Dublin Ireland has started out building
some benches. He hopes his next project will be a beehive, a chicken coop
and hopefully a small shed for the back of the garden.
I think Dave is on the right track. " I've only been doing it two weeks and I've got really ancient saws and tools but I'm getting there." I would say he's getting there. Nice work Dave. |
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