Pallet Baby Gate Project

So my wife has been asking for an upstairs baby gate to block off her sewing equipment for some time now. Women don't appreciate giant white board barriers as a permanent solution and I still haven't figured out why not. Heh, so anyways, this project was an idea to save money since we live in Hawaii now and wood here is very expensive, like everything else! It's the Aloha spirit! Down to business. I used 2 pallets for this project so I could pick and choose the boards. Also, some pallet boards will break with little pressure.

Dimensions for this gate: 40"x34" (You could go taller but not much longer due to the dimensions of the pallet. I used it with some creative 2x4 work to span a gap of 47" wide x 36" tall.

Phase 1: Pallet Demo: Tools: Crow bar, nail remover, hammer, mallet, saw.
Whacking the boards off initially with a mallet and/or using a block worked about 50% of the time but the wood splits easily. Loosening with a mallet and removal with crowbar, hammer, and nail remover turned out to work great as it was much less likely to split the wood. My toddlers loved helping take nails to the trash and pick up scraps.

Phase 2: Construct a square frame. Tools: Measuring tape, mallet, screws that will penetrate through 1/2 the second layer without over-penetration, Drill, Level, Speed square, Pencil, Chop saw, Skillsaw.   I cut my vertical pallet boards to 34" tall. I used the strongest/widest 2 boards for the most lateral L and R boards. I then trimmed two other horizontal boards down to 40" (basically kept their usual length). Just like framing a house, square and tack one corner and move to another before you lock in your corners. Once my Horizontal and vertical skeleton boards were locked in with screws, I moved to doubling up the most L and R lateral boards with smaller vertical 2nd layer boards. Honestly with the variations of pallet boards it work great to just trace the horizontal board lines "to fit" on the L and R 2ndary vertical boards and custom cut them with a skillsaw. The idea was to keep the gate from being more than 2 boards in width. (I looked at 3 and it was really beefy. Since none of my leftover boards had the length to span an "X" or "Z" pattern across the center of the gate, I just made 45 degree miter cutes on extra boards to help keep the gate square.

Phase 3: Stain, prep objective and paint. Tools: Stain, paint, primer, measuring tape, framing screws, painter's tape, newspaper, planar, sander. Lightly sand your gate frame. I really liked the rustic look of the boards and wanted to make them darker but keep the antiquity. I had leftover cappuccino stain from a table so I decided to use that and wipe quickly. Well, lightly sanded pallet board soaks stain instantly. The gate came out much darker than I originally planned. I used an old rag to immediately wipe the stain which helped some.
For the objective site, I decided to make a strong skeleton of 2x4s anchored into the steel wall on the hinge side of the gate. A friend had some ornamental 1/8" sheet plywood to cover the 2x4's which I install at the very end of the project. The dimensions of the frame were 36" tall by 5.5" wide. This gave me (47"-40"-5.5")=1.5" to spare. That would be my piggy back 2x4 on the latch side of the gate for the female end of the latch. which I installed almost last. I also painted the 2x4s with primer so that when it was all together, I would have less work.

Phase 4: Gate installation: Tools: Extra pallet and 2x4 blocks. 2 hinges (I used strong 6" farm hinges), latch system, level, tape measure, screws, screw driver. Figure out how high you want your hinges on the hinge side of the gate. I installed the hinges on the "fencepost" that would support the weight of the gate first. Ensure you are square. Then I used the blocks and a level to get the gate in the right position. Tack top and bottom hinges and ensure you are square before finishing all of the screws. The good thing about going overkill with anchoring and your hinges is that there is less of a chance for gate sagging. The gate held really well. Lastly, I examined my latch end. My piggyback 2x4 was too close that it was rubbing. That's why I waited to install it, it will make up for minor errors in distance throughout the 47". My friend had a planar so we ran it through there shaving about a 1/4" off. So now the 2x4 was down to 3.5"x1.25" (from the usual 2x4 dimensions of 1.5x3.5). It fit perfectly without rubbing. I locked it down with just a couple of framing screws. Since it is not bearing extra weight there is no need for overkill.

Phase 5: Tools: Caulk, 1/8" plywood, dremel, screws, screwdriver, staple gun, newspaper, painters tape. After the gate was installed and working great it was time to custom cut my plywood for the "5.5" Fencepost" on the hinge side. The dremel tool was used to cut out rectangles to facilitate the bases of the hinges. I then placed the plywood on ensuring it was flush especially on the top. A couple screws held the plywood in place then I used the stapler to lock it down a little better. I then caulked the entire gate system, let it set, primed the wood and painted it.

At first I was upset about how dark the wood turned out. It ended up keeping its rustic look though and contrasts great with the off-white railing. The wife is super happy! Not bad for under $20!

Questions? Comments? Let me know!

Farm Table Repurpose Project

   We've had a small 4 person table for about 5 years now. It's pretty beaten up and not the greatest for our growing family. It was lightweight as well which wasn't the best things around our rowdy boys, we actually had an issue once of it tipping over. We both decided long ago that we wanted a nice farm style country table that could fit our family and guests, I just became a roadblock because the price of a nice table is very high. So I was out garage-saling the other weekend when I came across this old table that a lady had wanted to get rid of. I made her day by buying it from her and hauling it away for $20! I was excited about the potential. I figured that if I could repurpose it on my free time, then I could make it our own for around $50-60 bucks! I'm in school right now so I don't have a lot of time to construct an entire table myself. I wanted to make this a surprise to my wife who was returning from a long trip away with the kids, sort of a welcome home present. It took about 6-8 hours of work and I'm not expert, but it turned out pretty decent for my first try! I spend about $40 on quart cans of primer, indoor white variant satin paint, dark cappuccino stain, and some furniture wax. 

1. The first thing I did was set the table up (this was important since I basically bought it blind). I wiped off all of the webs and storage dust off of it and sanded it down. I didn't get crazy (I just used my Craftsman sander with about an 80 grit sand paper) and hand sanded the molding. I didn't even bother with the legs etc because I bought primer to act as an adhering layer for the white paint.

2. I then wiped off all of the sawdust a couple times to prepare for staining. I painter's taped where the stain would meet the white paint. I blindly (without really any knowledge of the staining process) stained the top of the table. This is the most important step in the process in my opinion, and looking back, I should've watched a couple videos. There is a certain amount of finesse that goes into prepping the wood and rubbing it in right. I just painted it on liberally. It is important to keep in mind that you want to do your brushing (or rubbing it in) correctly the first time! Any defects in your work that you go back to fix will be silhouetted from the rest of the work. Hindsight is 20/20 and the good thing about it is, the defects kind of add to the charm and uniqueness of home furniture etc. It is important also to not that your biggest enemy will be applying the stain in a way that makes the stain drip or run, this is basically impossible to "cover up" making it much different than normal paint. You'll find that when you try to re-brush an area with even a moderately fresh bead of stain, everything will stick where it is except the bead (that part will come off completely leaving uneven colors). The stickiness of the stain is the culprit there as it wants to absorb and adhere as one coat. *One last stain note, I was really bummed when I sanded and it seemed like I "sanded" off the wood finish that was on the table, I was worried that it would be bland. It turns out that when you stain, that's the real thing that brings out the beauty in the wood so don't get too down on yourself if the sanded table looks like crap.

3. After the stain dried I got to work putting painters tape on the stain side of the paint/stain border. I then took and rapidly primed the surface of the legs etc creating the rough primer surface. It worked exceptionally well without any issues. 

4. Then came the paint, I put two coats of paint on it back to back and drank a couple of beers. Legs can be a little bit of an issue, but remember uniformity and like with everything, go with the grain of the wood.

5. Lastly I waxed, this was the most laborious part of the process. I liberally applied a based wipe of wax with an old shirt. I worked 1/3 of the table at a time and just rubbed hard. It'd helped bring it to an initial gloss. I tried using some power tools to help but they made it look shanty. So back to waxing I went, it was surprisingly back-breaking work. I rubbed in two separate coats before giving up. I did the molding as well and crudely rubbed in 1 coat of wax into the legs. The furniture wax I used was for light brown furniture and tinted the white a little. I was actually happy about this as the white paint was really darn white before it. So a win win I guess. Well, anyways, I was able to get the table set up for my lover by the time she got home and she lost her mind. She said it was "the best present she could've ever come home too!" Not bad for $60!

 

My future with this table entails antiquing the legs some and throwing a couple more coats of wax on it to make it more child proof. We will also be getting chairs that match it better or repurpose some used ones! Anyways, we are both happy and love having this over our old table!