Reclaimed Wood - Pallet to Bench

I had a craving. And it wasn't for the usual: chocolate. It was to build something.

Power tools are no stranger to me. We built our own home a few years ago, and I was as involved in that process as I could be. One of my fondest memories, and a very lengthy task, was the door and window moldings. Instead of the big box store prefabs, we chose to make our own. It was very time consuming, but we love the results! We had to cut each pine board to size, then router and sand. Then to install, nail them into place. It was quite the task - and we put many of our family members to work!

(not the children! However, Stephen was busy learning Spanish from our brick and concrete guys).

Okay, back to my craving.

I had the thing all day. The craving, that is. When I'm having a "wood-building-constructing-kinda-feeling", the first place I head to is my absolute favorite inspirational place for wood working - http://ana-white.com/. Ana posts "free and easy" woodworking plans, if you hadn't seen her site, you really should take a moment (after you finish reading this post) to check it out.  So, I searched through plan after plan, and couldn't decide what I wanted to make. I also didn't feel like driving to town to get lumber, so I decided to check our little stash of scrap wood out at the edge of our property, in the woods.

And I looked like this:

And in my pretty purple dress, I dragged these closer to the house to deconstruct.

After hammering and pulling and twisting and groaning, I managed to get all the boards apart.

I didn't use any of the plans I had seen, but since I studied some table plans earlier (Thanks, Ana!), I had the basic idea of how to construct a table. And in my case, I wanted to make a bench, so I just made the legs really short.

Here is my frame. No plans. No pattern, I cut as I went. (and honestly, most times that is how I design my clothing and sewing projects too!)

Once the frame was assembled - I found some scrap 4x4 pressure treated pieces in the garage for the legs, I chose some pretty and rustic boards from the stash to use as the seat of the bench. I removed the rusty nails, and laid them in place, ready to be cut.

Once I figured how much I wanted them to overhang, I started cutting.

(this little baby is my favorite tool!)

I then nailed all the boards onto the frame using a nail gun hooked to an air compressor.

Now the bench is ready to sand.

This is the final product - it took me about 2 hours to make it. Just long enough for the hubs to coach his baseball team. He got back home when I was almost finished sanding. To my surprise, he LOVED the new bench! Which made me really happy and proud of myself. And he didn't even get upset that I touched all of his toys power tools. :)

I will stain this pretty little thing another day.

I love the rustic reclaimed wood, but I don't love the legs.

But, I used what I had, and built something out of nothing!

Now doesn't that make you want to go build something?!