The Internet is full of ideas for ways to reuse pallet wood. We here at Unconsumption certainly have shared a good number of them. (Browse our Pinterest board here, Tumblr archive here, and/or Facebook album here for various examples, including several ideas for DIY projects.)
If pallet repurposing interests you, and you’ve been wondering how to go about disassembling pallets, here’s a brief tutorial from Old World Garden Farms that looks like it could be helpful.
I’m guessing that most of us don’t own the tool the tutorial recommends using: a reciprocating saw (a.k.a. “sawzall”) that can cut through nails. If, like me, you don’t own one, perhaps you live someplace where there’s a tool bank where you could rent such a tool, or a tool library where you could borrow one?
Special note: For reuse projects, many of us look for pallets that are made from harder wood that, if it’s been treated, was heat-treated, not chemical-treated. We mention it on Facebook here.
Another cabin constructed from pallet wood — this one’s on wheels. (And it’s a work-in-progress for Michael Janzen, but still, pallet-reuse inspiration!)
(via Tiny Free House)
Save wine bottles, make your own tables.
Simply insert bottles in to openings in pieces of wood. In addition to use as table tops, the pieces of wood (in this case, they’re scrap wood sealed with a wax finish) can function as serving trays.
Brazilian designer Tati Guimarães designed this collection. We featured her metal frame that holds corks — for use as trivets, or to hang on a wall — on Unconsumption here (way back in June 2009!). Check out her site, Ciclus, for additional information.
See also: Earlier Unconsumption post on shelving made from wine bottles and pieces of wood.
For other items in Unconsumption’s wine o’clock series — an occasional series of posts highlighting examples of wine-related repurposing — browse here.
For his MFA Thesis Exhibit last September, Pennsylvania artist James McNabb created a beautiful collection of architectural wonders using discarded wood. He describes his process as “sketching with a band saw,” and says initial intent was not to build skylines, but instead began with the creation of the individual wooden pieces which resembled tools or other strangely familiar objects.
After he built nearly 250 of them in a day they collectively began to resemble a miniature city. You can see many more works from the exhibition on his website.
(via Sketching with a Band Saw: James McNabb’s Scrap Wood Cityscapes | Colossal)
The “favela chair,” designed by brothers Fernando and Humberto Campana (mentioned previously here), was inspired by the architecture of shanty towns, a.k.a. favelas, in the Campanas’ native Brazil.
Each chair is hand-glued and nailed together from scrap wood, making each chair unique.
Photo via SFMOMA, which is one of several museums with a favela chair in its permanent collection.
Spotted in the last slide of this post from The New York Times design blog. (In the NYT piece, check out the LOT-EK lamp made from a detergent bottle!)
New uses for old crates, continued:
Upcycle them into furniture.
AutumnWorkshop made the items pictured above.
sabi collection is a recently launched jewelry line that takes pieces of raw wood that are collected from the United States and all over the world, and turns them into one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry.
Each piece comes with a photo showing the raw piece of wood that it’s made from and where the wood was found. They incorporate various types of metal for the chains, as well as wire, to make each piece unique.
![Woodguards [alternative to traditional bike mudguards] are made using re-claimed European and African timber and brightly coloured formica. They look fantastic and are very practical (they are actually lighter than your average plastic mudguards).
Each pair are hand-made in Edinburgh, with a furniture-makers skill and attention to detail.
(via Woodguards)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8eikr1QGR1qzv12bo1_400.jpg)
Woodguards [alternative to traditional bike mudguards] are made using re-claimed European and African timber and brightly coloured formica. They look fantastic and are very practical (they are actually lighter than your average plastic mudguards).
Each pair are hand-made in Edinburgh, with a furniture-makers skill and attention to detail.
(via Woodguards)
Many of you have liked our posts on tree houses, backyard cabins, and other retreat sorts of buildings constructed from reclaimed wood.
Now, there’s this: Cottages and garden sheds constructed out of wood salvaged from barns and other buildings. Designed and built by Minnesota-based The Rustic Way. Owner Dan Pauly also builds custom furniture and other items from reclaimed wood.
Nice design, isn’t it?
It’s wine o’clock (somewhere) — which means it’s time to share a wine-related repurposing find.
Today, it’s a DIY project: Turn wine crates into a coffee table.
For the how-to / tutorial, see this DIY Vintage Chic blog post. (Spotted on Pinterest here.)
Note: The tutorial mentions the idea of buying new crates at a craft store/retailer, but why not make a table from used crates from, say, a local wine shop, liquor store, or grocery store?!
For earlier posts in Unconsumption’s wine o’clock series, go here.
Cheers!
Griffin’s WoodTones’ earbud casings are “made from left-over bits of wood that otherwise would have been burned or thrown into a landfill.”
That’s cool. Plus they look pretty great. But the most interesting bit is that the use of wood “can actually help improve the audio quality.”
According to its website, the wooden earbuds can help accentuate mid-range, while ensuring high notes are clean and clear, and bass sounds more solid. The wooden casing also helps improve acoustics and clarity without the need to turn up the volume. Each pair retails for $29.99 and can be ordered online.
“The Minister’s Treehouse in Crossville, Tennessee is a 100ft structure built by minister Horace Burgess from the early 1990s through 2004. The entire building wraps around a giant tree and was built completely without blueprints, sprawling to an estimated 10,000 square feet inside, including a four-story swing set.” [via Colossal (via Required Reading)
A key point, not mentioned above: Most of the building’s lumber was reclaimed from “garages, storage sheds and barns” (as per this 2007 USAToday story).
Pretty cool.
