I tried using old pallets for a pantry build and it was a total waste of time

I spent a whole weekend cleaning, sanding, and cutting up three free pallets to make shelves, but they were so warped and uneven that nothing sat flat. My wife's $40 worth of basic pine boards from the hardware store made a perfect, square unit in about three hours. Why do people keep saying pallet wood is a good free option when it's so much more work for a worse result?

2 comments

2 Comments

ryan9529h ago

Free pallets" always sounds better than it actually is.

the_alex8h ago

Yeah, the "free" part is a total trap, @ryan952. You end up spending a whole afternoon breaking them apart, only to find half the boards are split or full of rusty nails. I learned to only grab the ones stamped "HT" for heat-treated, since those aren't soaked in chemicals.