Pallet Wall Instructions

After almost a year in my new house I finally got around to doing a pallet wall in my first floor powder room. I gathered a number of pallets from Craigslist and had them stored in my backyard.


Having never tackled a wood project like this one I had to start with tools. I already owned this nail gun and compressor here


I also already own a compound miter saw. Any saw you can use to cut down the length of your boards will work - I just happen to already have this one.


I purchased a reciprocating saw because I wanted to make the pallets as easy to cut up as possible (I am several months pregnant!) and I wanted to preserve the nail heads in the wood. I was really going for a distressed and old look to the wood - keeping the nailheads intact was key. This is the saw that I ended up with here
Next, I needed supplies: 1 quart of the cheapest interior black paint they had at the hardware store Nails for the nail gun - I used 1.75 inch, Dish soap,  nylon brush and Clear wood stain.
Onto the actual project!

It took only a couple of hours to cut up 4 pallets using the reciprocating saw. I did this by myself with the pallets propped up. I've never used a reciprocating saw before and it was pretty simple. I had a blade that was multipurpose for wood and metal making the job a snap. Once I had the boards off I used a nylon brush and warm soapy water to scrub down both sides of each board. I knew they would be dirty but they were really gross - do not skip this step! I let the boards dry overnight then moved on to staining. I wanted to maintain the natural variances in wood and purposefully used pallets of different colors, so I chose a clear stain. I only stained one side of the boards and all of the edges. It took me a few weeks but I finally had time to do the fun part of the project. I took down the mirror and painted the wall black. I didn't pay much attention to how good it looked and I only brought the paint to 1-2 inches from the corners. I'm an instant gratification sort of girl so I got this done as fast as possible.


 

After the paint was dry I used chalk to generally mark the studs in the wall. I chose not to use any glue because I didn't want to ruin the drywall. The only thing holding my wall up is nails and it is quite secure. Starting from the bottom - I just started putting up boards using the nail gun. The only thing I paid much attention to was making sure each board on the row was the same width. I used a level for each row but you will find the boards are warped and thus never just perfect. There were a couple of places on the wall that I thought might drive me nuts because they aren't perfect - but those are the spots I love the most now. I struggled cutting around the water lines for the toilet and sink because the builder hadn't left a lot of space in the lines to pull back the covers. If you look close they look crappy, but why are you looking that close at the toilet water lines? The entire wall only took a couple of hours to put up. I made sure I had 3 nails on each board per stud. I rehung the mirror and voila, a beautiful bathroom. Now when I use the room I'm still in awe at how cool it turned out!