Man Turns Old Wood Pallets Into The Ultimate Indoor Storage Cabinet

Using up old wooden pallets for DIY projects can be incredibly satisfying, and a big part of the reason why is that the lumber that comes from them is often free of charge. If they don't have any rot, signs of insect damage, or a methyl bromide stamp, you can disassemble them and turn them into stunning pieces of furniture that'll last for years. There's a stunning example of this from DIY Creation Woodworking on YouTube. The channel shared a video of a skilled woodworker turning old wooden pallets into a handy storage cabinet for a bedroom or entryway. The finished product has a functional, multi-level design with a series of drawers and an extendable hanger rack that comes out from the side of the furnishing.

In the video, the man creating the storage cabinet first shows how he disassembled his wooden pallet. He uses a couple of hand tools for pulling out the nails, and a surface planer for smoothing out the lumber and removing visible defects. From there, he makes the frame for the cabinet from the newly restored pallet wood, and installs flat boards vertically along the sides to make the walls of the furnishing. He also builds drawer boxes and cabinet doors from scratch, using a combination of the pallet wood and what appears to be lumber scraps he has in his workshop. Though the assembly of the furnishing is definitely on the more complex side, it's undoubtedly one of the most exciting wood pallet projects you can DIY at home.

There are a couple of characteristics of this storage cabinet DIY that make it tricky to replicate. There are many places where you can find free pallets for projects, but unfortunately, few of the pallets will have boards as wide as the one in the video. You may need to either scale down the cabinet to suit the size of the pallets available to you, or otherwise use supplemental lumber. You'll also need a benchtop hollow-chisel mortiser and a miter saw for this project, in addition to a surface planer. The mortiser in particular is important for setting up mortise and tenon joints, which the woodworker in the video uses for joining the frame's pieces.​

There are two important components of the cabinet from the video that aren't assembled from pallets. The first is the woven wood in the cabinet doors, which is made from thin, flexible scrap wood strips. The second is the back panel of the cabinet, which appears to just be a large standard plywood board. You can easily pick up this last sort of lumber from retailers like Home Depot and Lowes. Also, the person in the video rounds off the wood himself for his cabinet's pull-out clothes hanger. However, it would likely be much easier to simply buy wooden dowel rods instead when building in such a feature. If this project looks too intimidating, you can upcycle old wood pallets into a space-saving outdoor storage system instead.