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!

Activity Board Project

 
So my wife Crystal originally keyed me onto the idea of making a sensory/activity like board for the kids. It seemed like a fun project. I found some inspiration from a couple other blogs but wanted to take it a step further. I decided that the doorbell I was to install and the light switches needed to actually work, otherwise my 9 month old and 1.5 year old would think it was lame. Yeah, I had big expectations to fill to say the least. Here are links to our inspirations: Here and here, I decided that I wanted to make a hybrid of the two!

After sawing out some crude switch holes, it was off to paint 

Kids checking out first wired circuit

Home Depot and Lowe's sell the fancy little 2'x2' plywood boards for pretty cheap. The most difficult thing was finding out the best way to do the wiring. After some trial and error I found the following and it was actually very easy. I bought 12V LEDs that had resistors built in (Radio Shack, about $2 a piece). I also bought some low voltage wire which was inexpensive. The real key to the wiring is twofold. It is essential to buy a battery platform that is prewired. I picked up a set of ten x 12V (carry 8 x AAs) battery containers for about $10 off Ebay. I had originally tried soldering the batteries in sequence with wires but it proved to be quite ineffective. (I wasn't able to get the soldering to hold very well originally without the battery containers and the lights would flicker a lot). Secondly I bought a bag of small wire caps to connect wires together and a bag of small clamps to adhere loose wires to the wood.

The electrical sequence should be as follows (although the switch could technically go anywhere):

12V Battery Source (+ end) >> (+) LED wire >>LED>> (-) LED Wire >> Switch >> 12V Battery (- end)

Trying a simple circuit using a single 9V Battery

*Remember if you do more than one LED than the LEDs should be wired in parallel so they each get 12V. If they are wired in sequence they will each take a separate portion of the voltage. (Example 4 LEDs wired in sequence on a 12V Battery would each use 3V, [12V/4=3V] this would not light the LED properly).

Everything else on the board is either held down via screws with nuts on the backside or secured into the 2x4 frame. Cutting an 8 foot 2"x4" will give you all of the frame pieces plus one extra. I used the leftover piece to put in the center of the middle of the plywood sandwich as this will keep the kids from breaking the plywood when they step in the middle. It worked great.

The project cost was probably around $50. It is fun and the kids absolutely love it. Their favorite parts are the doorbell (which I taped up to make more quiet) and the LED light switches. It's got room to grow and we are going to put some finishing touches on it. More to come!

Feel free to comment with any questions/comments!