1.Tools & Supplies Used
- Gloves
- Reciprocating saw
- Circular saw
- Hammer
- Flat bar
- Stain
- Rags
- Plastic
- Rubber gloves
- Air compressor
- Finish nailer
- Finish nails
- Chalk line
- Level
- Speed square
- T bevel (needed for vaulted ceiling)
- Stud finder
- Step ladder
- Goggles
2. Break Down Pallets
Tearing apart the pallets was time-consuming and kind of difficult as
a one-man task. I could have used an extra set of hands. I stood the
pallets up on end and used a reciprocating saw to cut the nails off that
were connecting the planks to the three main pallet boards.
Tip 1: Buy a long blade made for metal. I was cheap
and used a few short blades that my dad let me borrow. I broke a few in
the process (sorry, Dad). They are kind of expensive (like $20 I think?)
but it would have saved a lot of time. The short blades don’t work very
well on the wider boards when you get to the middle of the pallet. The
blade doesn’t quite reach the nails and then I ended up fighting with
them quite a bit. A long blade would have solved that problem.
Tip 2: If the ends are too mangled to use, simply use a speed square to draw a straight line and then saw off the unusable section.
We started near the top of the wall, before it starts its peak. This
was a suggestion from Cape 27 and their thinking was that when you get
to the bottom, if the width of the boards didn’t work out exactly and
you had to cut them horizontally, it would be better to have those
half-pieces at the bottom of the wall than at the top. We had to trim
some slivers for the bottom, and in hindsight, we should have just
started at the bottom of our wall since we have a peak. Because we
started in the middle of the wall, we had to cut boards at both the top
and the bottom.
Regardless, we started level and remained pretty level as we worked
our way down the wall. And when we were done with that, we started the
peak and worked up to the top. And because our boards were warped, we
ended up having to notch out certain boards to remain somewhat level.
The angles…
oh, the angles. I put my ol’ siding skills to the
test and bought a T bevel. However, the angle was too steep and it left
me with a lot of trial and error.
There was one cut piece that took me at least six tries, back and
forth from the garage, up and down off the ladder, all while Kelsey was
laying on the bed, giggling at me. Too frustrated to laugh at myself, we
argued about the situation into the wee hours of the morning…Kelsey
helped by taking scrap slivers and filling in the gaps. This is in no
way perfect, but we like the look of imperfection.
It feels like we are sleeping in a log cabin! We absolutely love it!
We’re working on planning out the rest of our master bedroom makeover
and the pallet wall is just the center focal point we needed to start
with
by wordsofwilliams
