Giving new life to pallets
A bit of creativity and patience and the versatile scrap wood is a DIY dream
They’re relatively cheap, exceptionally versatile, easy to find and friendly to the environment too.
Wooden pallets – square platforms common in warehouses or factories to carry stock typically moved using forklifts – have over the last few years been moving off recycling trash heaps and into people’s homes.
Their uses are endless: from coffee tables, TV stands, pool deck furniture, headboards, kitchen cupboards, bookshelves, wall décor, benches to chairs. The world seems to have gone wood pallet crazy.
East London resident Gary Negus, who started out making pallet furniture but now makes and sells décor items, said his love of pallet wood stems from how versatile the wood is.
In its raw form, the wood gives furniture items a rough, rustic look.
Treated, sanded down and painted, the wood transforms to create a neater, more polished look.
Negus said he started working with pallet wood by chance on his arrival to East London from Cape Town.
“I was sitting on the beach and I asked God to show me a sign of what I should be doing with my life and out of nowhere I saw a pallet on the sand,” he said.
“I picked it up and got to work. I’ve been working with pallet wood since then.”
According to Negus, pallet wood is a “do-ityourselfer’s” dream, with the only snag being the difficulty in taking it apart.
“The furniture is easy to make but it’s not easy to take it apart without splitting the wood. It’s more time-consuming too than say your superwood,” he said.
This didn’t stop Rob and Rose Boshoff, owners of Rob’s Pallet Creations in Willow Park.
The couple said their business was born three years ago when Rose wanted a palette wood coffee table.
It didn’t take long for her truck driver husband to fulfil her wish.
“I saw that everybody was going crazy over pallet wood and I wanted something made out of it in my house too. Everything in my house then was black and I wanted something new and different,” she said.
From there, the couple made a headboard, a TV stand, kitchen cupboards and side tables. Not long after that, people starting asking about buying some of their items. Working out of a makeshift workshop which once served as a carport, the couple now employ a team of three to assist with orders.
Rob said their love of the wood stems from the grain which leaves a beautiful pattern. He further described it as rustic, treated timber which lasts forever.
“It’s also much cheaper to work with than normal pine,” he said.
According to Rob, any piece of furniture they makes starts out as a simple pallet which they strip down and take part apart while trying not to break or crack it. From there it goes through the thickness planer to get the wood all the same size.
Once the item is built it goes outside to a grinding machine to make it even smoother. The holes where the nails went through are covered, it’s painted then waxed.
Rob said: “We get our pallets from a local factory. When we started I remember buying a pallet for R250 but now I know that pallets should cost around R15.”
The couple advertise over Facebook and word-of-mouth.
“This is a labour of love for us and through God’s grace we have managed to carve a living out of it,” Rose said. “I remember saying to Rob just last year that I’m so scared that the pallet craze might just die down one day. Luckily that hasn’t happened at all, instead it seems to be growing bigger.”