DIY Pallet Wood Nightstand | How To Make A Side TablePosted by Galloway Holland on June 13th, 2021 This past month I was challenged to create a knockoff piece of furniture for under $ 100, so I decided to recreate a $ 400 nightstand that I just cannot justify buying with free pallets and $ 40 worth of store-bought lumber, and I'm gon na show you how I did that in this video today, this project was sponsored by my amazing partners at DAP. I have a serious love for pallet wood projects. In fact, my first video on YouTube was also a pallet wood project and I learned a lot of woodworking techniques on pallet wood in college and have not used them in a while. So I was really stoked to get started. My method for breaking apart pallets is that I use a circular saw to cut the ends away from the stringers of the pallet, and then I go ahead and grab a hammer and just pull up the center boards. This allows for very minimal nail removal later on. In the process, if you're looking to use pallets in your own project, it's important to understand markings on the pallets and which ones may be hazardous to your health. So, to help I linked in article below this video for you to check out on my website about pallet safety once the pallets were ripped apart, I brought them to my shop and began to D nail the Centers of the boards. Now there are a thousand and one ways in which you can remove pallets from the stringers, but I choose this way because it allows me to ensure that every single nail is out of the board before running it through my planer or my table saw the last Thing I would really want is any kickback, because my blade hits a nail, and this is a really great way to make sure that there are minimal nails as soon as I get started after detailing the pallets, I then sorted them into similar widths after sorting. I then brought the pallet wood over to my table, saw and cut them down to two inches wide by trimming both ends of the board, and by doing this, I'm able to have really straight edges on both ends of the pallet wood, which will help with my Gluing up later, since we'll be making a ton of panels, [ Music, ], the list of tools and products and materials that they used for this project were pretty extensive. So I decided to just drop a link below this video for you to check out the blog post, which has an entire shopping list of tools and materials and everything else. You need to create a project just like this, but essentially once I was done prepping the pallets. It was time to begin the build - and I did this by gluing together several boards with wood glue and then clamp them together in order to just laminate them in two panels. Now I had to repeat this process a lot of times, because I created a top panel bottom paddle, two side panels a drawer front and also a shelf, but you can find all the details and dimensions for those pieces on my website and again that's in the Link below this video, as I clamped my panels, I kept a damp rag around and just decided to wipe off any squeeze out, and this will make cleaning up the board's a little easier later. Originally, I actually wasn't going to run these boards through my planer, because I really like the way that they look, but at some point in the process I totally changed my mind and if I knew that I was going to be using it from the gecko, I Probably would not have wiped away the glue, because the planer does a really good job of that on its own [, Music, ], [, Music ]. After allowing the panels to dry overnight, I then remove the clamps and took them to my table, saw to cut them down to their final lengths, [ Music ]. Next, I decided to run the palette, went through the planer and seriously. I felt like a magician just your average everyday David Blaine may be pulling the rabbit out of a hat because look how beautiful that would actually is. I knew I wanted to use dowel joinery for this build. So once everything was cleaned, I used a speed square to just mark where I wanted my dowels. One of the important things to note is that if you are doing a project like this and planing the wood, you don't want to take too much off, because you definitely need room for the dowels to rest inside of the piece. Now there were a couple different places in which I had to join these pieces. Some of them were joined along the end and some of them were joined along the side. The ones on the end were a little bit less tricky and I'm going to show you what I did to adjust the depth for the ones that were joined via the side. I decided to take the dowel and I marked how shallow they could be based on the width of the boards, and then I just set my dowel stopper to that size. Now this kit does come with a stopper, but I had definitely dropped it at some point. During the project and could not find it, so I just used painters tape to mark the depth of each drill, [ Music ]. Once the openings for the dowels were all drilled, I did a dry fit just to make sure everything would line up, and I'm really happy that I did this before gluing up, because things were a little tight, but it gave me an idea as to how I Could kind of force things into place and once I knew that things were gon na fit, I use some wood glue and added the dowels back to the board [ Music ] after tapping everything into place and shout-out to Tyson more from my amazing new mallet, I Used a speed square and clamps to clamp everything together and to allow the dowels and the glue to join together, nice and tightly and strong. I then just use my wet cloth to wipe away any of the extra squeeze out because that's going to be sanding. So much easier later [, Music ]. I did actually run out of clamps after clamping the two sides to the top piece. So after allowing them to dry overnight, I removed the clamps from the top and then got started on getting the bottom attached to the rest of the build [ Music ]. Once the outer pieces were assembled, I gave the inside a quick sand to make finishing later easier. I then trimmed the shelf piece to size, because I needed to have a gap at the front to fit the drawer front. I then attached the Shelf to the nightstand with glue and used a brad nail to just hold it into place, while I clamped it down and allowed it to dry once the bulky part of the nightstand was built, it was time to mill the lumber for the Legs and I wanted to keep this piece as cost friendly as possible, so I just milled two by fours into smaller sizes. At first I ran him through my table saw and made them one and a half by one and a half inches and you'll see in a little bit that I ended up actually hating the way that looked. It was a little too chunky for the nightstand. So I ran a brand new two by fours through the table, saw at some point to make them one inch by one inch thick in any event, regardless of which one I chose, the joinery was exactly the same. I just drilled pocket holes into each one of the frame pieces and left the legs alone, and then I joined the frame pieces to the legs using screws and wood glue. As you can see here, this was the original base and I hated it. So I decided to make it skinnier and just joined it all up together to see an exact way as before. Once I was happy with the base, I then sanded it down and used a metallic metal. Looking black spray painting, I can't recall the name of it off the top of my head, but it is linked in the blog post as the base dried. I used a Danish oil in dark walnut to finish up the pallet wood and I cannot believe how awesome the pallet wood ended up. Looking with the Danish oil even better, it was able to seal it all in so I don't have to worry about ruining it later and once everything was dry. I countersunk some wood screws through the nightstand into the base and held everything nice and tight after creating the nightstand itself. It was time to cut the drawer into size, so I used some 3/4 inch plywood that I had laying around my shop to create the drawer and then attached it using wood glue and pocket hole screws. I also then, attach the bottom of the drawer using quarter inch, plywood and Brad nails with similar glue as well [, Music ]. Next, it was time to install the drawer slide, so I just placed the face of the drawer front on to the build lines up where it needed to go and taped it into place, and once I was happy with that positioning, I turned the piece around and Installed the slides, I used a scrap piece of wood to help bump the slide away from the bottom of the nightstand. Since the pallet wood was a little wonky and then I just installed them using screws. I then installed the other part of the drawer slide to the bottom of the drawer and placed it inside the nightstand. Installing the drawer front on this one is a little tricky, so I decided to add some rapid fuse to the front of the verb box and then attach the drawer front to the drawer box and secured it into place using tape. I spaced it out the way I wanted to and allowed this to dry just to hold it in place and then once it was dry, I went through the back and added screws to secure it. This part was totally optional, but I had a lot of scrap board leftover from the two by fours and I hated the exposed edges of the plywood. So I just installed a couple of scraps to hide that and to make it look a little neater. I forgot to create a groove in the back to add some plywood to hide the back of the drawer, so I just took a really snug piece of quarter-inch plywood and added it with rapid fuse and after a few days of quality time with my new shed Shop, I officially had a $ 40 knock off of a $ 400 nightstand, and I cannot believe that it was made out of pallets, even though I'm the one who built it if you're looking for more projects like this one in the future, please subscribe to my Channel I post a video every other Wednesday and you can also visit my website for more ideas as well. But in the meantime, thank you so much for watching and supporting. check these guys out look forward to your pallet projects in the future and happy DIY [, Music, ]Like it? Share it! 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