Building stuff out of shipping pallets seems to be all the rage right now and I can see why.
They are free (or can be if you know where to look)
They can be “upcycled” (finding a use for something that is otherwise considered trash)
They can offer a unique look and character to a project
Anyway, shortly after moving into our new house we began questioning why we never had a table to put our coffee on (just me tho, Jessie doesn’t drink coffee). As fun as it may be to shop for new home furnishings and despite having an IKEA minutes away, the thought of venturing out and searching for a table just didn’t excite us at the time. Of course the next logical step was for Jessie to overload me with hundreds of pintrest ideas for pallet tables. Most of them were cute and all and a few were downright amazing. But most just looked like, well…pallets with legs. 
I let the idea simmer for a while until Jessie left on a rock climbing trip to Colorado. With a week to myself and just the Huskies as company I finally decided to make some saw dust and see if any inspiration would surface. Luckily we occasionally have spare pallets in the warehouse at work so I set up shop out back and spent the better part of a Saturday breaking them down. Because I wanted full length slats and wanted to keep the nail holes for added character this task ended up taking a lot longer than expected. I managed to get an efficient technique down by prying the slats up a bit and using the reciprocating saw to slice thru the outboard nails. the inboard nails required the pry bar. Then lots and lots of denailing with a punch for the sawed off nails and traditional hammer technique for the full nails. Oh, and did I mention those stubborn spiral nails? Those were a real chore. Now I understand why so many people just tack on some legs and call it a day!
Apparently a long and sweaty afternoon breaking down pallets got the creative juices flowing. That was when I came up with the basic idea for my table; diagonally oriented slats on a plywood base with hairpin legs. Once I selected the most visually interesting boards I simply started from the middle and glued/brad nailed the slats to the base. Once all the plywood was covered I used a circular saw to hack off all the extra slat material that was left overhanging. Somehow I improvised a way to trim out the edges with the last scraps and sort of blend their raw profiles together along the bottom edge.
A lot of people have asked if I painted or stained the table. Yes and no: I did use a “clear” stain in order to bring out the grain details and then finished off with polyurethane. These two things didn’t add any color but seemed to make them a little “deeper” while also protecting the wood. The colors that you see are straight from the pallet including the blue slats which were already painted. Of course they didn’t look that nice originally when they were all dirty but a light sanding revealed an interesting visual variety.
The hairpin legs are straight from Amazon and happened to be the most expensive part. I kind of like the contrast between wood and metal as well as the “visual lightness” that they add. But hey, I’m just an engineer, not an interior decorator so I wouldn’t be surprised if some stylistically inclined people laugh at my assessment. The legs originally looked too clean and polished for my taste so I added a very subtle cross hatch by twisting some 80 grit sandpaper back and forth while simultaneously pulling the leg along lengthwise. A very subtle detail but I think it was worth the 5 minutes or so of extra effort. Finally, I sprayed a couple coats of clear satin from a rattle can to keep the rust at bay.
This was one of my more creative endeavors in recent times and it was really enjoyable to make it up on the fly since I am more of a calculated engineer type. There were lots of things I could improve on but I am a recovering perfectionist and learning to embrace the small “mistakes” that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. I think that’s what they call learning.