shed – Stories From Off The Grid.

Free wood!

If you live off the grid or just have a lot of projects requiring wood, pallets are perfect.

They are a great choice for many reasons:

They’re free
They’re already nailed together
There are plenty of them
They have a billion possible uses
You can find them EVERYWHERE

Where can you find them?

Behind grocery stores
In the alleys behind hardware stores
In the garbage/recycling areas of businesses
On Craigslist

What can you do with them?

Make furniture for your house.
Craft projects: Signs, decorations, hangers for jewelry, etc.
Shop uses: shelves, tool holders, work tables.
Dismantle them and burn them
Build a shed or even a house out of them.

To cut them up or dismantle individual planks use:

a jig saw
a circular saw
a pry bar
a nifty tool we bought at an Ace Hardware called The Wrecker (a fancy pry bar with extra “bars” for whatever leverage you need
a hammer and a chisel for working the nails out
a hammer to just whack the slats free (might break it)
a couple of two by fours to remove individual planks without breaking them

For assembling various projects use:

A drill and drill bits for pilot holes through thick boards
A screw guide for the drill (a MUST)
Wood or deck screws of varying lengths
Nails
Brackets made by screwing two pieces of wood together or metal ones from the hardware store to add extra strength at attachment points
Circular saw for cutting leg lengths and larger straight surfaces
Hand saw
Hammer
C-clamp for holding pieces together tightly (the third arm) while installing screws
Jig saw
Tape measure
Wood router
Wood pencil for marking (works even on wet surfaces)
Other hardware such as hooks and hangers
Varnish

General tips:

That screw guide for your drill makes sinking those long screws SO much easier
C-clamp for securing pieces – night and day
Pilot holes for those thick pieces. You’ll strip the screws otherwise
Pilot holes to prevent cracking. You don’t always have to but if the wood is prone to cracking or on the thin side, it’ll help
Look for the better specimens in pallets. There are some shitty torn up ones you just pass up
If you do end up with a shitty pallet, you can add slats from another shitty pallet to make one whole shitty pallet

Here are some photos of things we’ve done so far:

Looking across our property at night through the mist of a very low-lying cloud is the beckoning rectangular shaped glow that is our nearly-assembled ShelterLogic 12′ X 30′ snow-load rated shed.

Almost a month after receiving it, it’s up and we’re down to the last touches like installing the anchors that will keep it from blowing away. It’s supposed to take three people about three-and-a-half hours to assemble.

It took us a little longer.

The instructions were all in pictures but our strategy was to jump in as far ahead as possible until we made a crucial mistake then back up and start at the beginning.

Fourth time’s a charm.

We’ve needed a real shed since we moved here. Our old one is constructed of pallets – the roof being a lattice-work of beams haphazardly nailed together with a tarp on top. The parts of the tarp that lay over the openings would fill with rain and snow and sag heavily.

We had to keep it cleared off but it got overloaded once or twice with what was probably tons of snow. Surprisingly, it held while some neighbor’s professionally built structures caved in.

Our antiques, bikes, cleaning supplies, tools – all of it has been going into the shed and suddenly I’m thinking we should have gotten a bigger one.