There’s a handful of people that my lovely girl introduced me to through her friend network when I moved to Adelaide, and they are into living simply. Not too many people are building their own furniture from recycled materials, but this idea appealed to me as I’ve always liked making my own things. I am not a carpenter or have any trade skills at all, really, so the furniture that I have built is lovingly considered “rustic” which happens to be a style I love and is all I can really build 🙂

Anyway, when I moved into my own place after housesitting for a few months, I was inspired by my girlfriend’s housemate who was starting to build things out of discarded wooden shipping pallets left in piles of hard rubbish on the side of the road. If you find one in half-decent shape, it contains a lot of hefty quality hunks of wood, certainly good enough to build a strong structure. And when you start looking, they are everywhere!

Here’s a few things I’ve built from wood pallets:

Pallet table and crate n' pallet daybed/sofa

Spice rack made from pallet pieces

I also made my computer desk out of a pallet.

…and some stuff from other recycled bits of hard rubbish I’ve found around the neighbourhood:

Bits of a discarded dining room table and loose metal scraps

Crate seats with op-shop fabric seats and found wood for the tables