bam!!! mr. tarrou. nope, this is not anothermath lesson. in this video we are going to be showing you how to build a sectional couchout of pallets. like my shirt says, we are about to do something awesome. so we justwent to our friends house in tennessee and she went onto pinterest and saw all of thesewonderful pictures of sectional couches made out of pallets. and, she had seen our videoon how to make christmas trees out of pallets. i am going to put a link to that video rightthere. she had also seen pictures where we had done sink tables out of pallets and youwill see in the bottom left hand corner of the scene some americana style flags out ofpallets and thought you could do this while you are up here please. i thought how hardcould it be. they all looked really nice on
pinterest. but, we started realizing thatthere were no was measurements, there was no real instructions on how to make thesepallet couches. i want to share with you what we learned in trying to develop this sectionalcouch our friends. now, one thing...the number one thing is we never realized how many differentshapes and sized pallets came in. that became really important when you needed to use tenof these pallets to build on sectional couch. a standard size pallet which is what we areusing here is 40 inches wide. they are 48 inches tall as they stand and these particularpallets are 4.5 inches thick, but that thickness can vary anywhere from 4.5 and 5.25 inchesas we discovered trying to build our couch. that made it very difficult to try and getthem all to stack evenly so you of course
have a nice comfortable flat sectional couch.so that is the number one thing as you start getting these supplies together and hopefullyfinding some pallets from small businesses in this area that maybe will just let youtake them off their hands for free. try to get them all made the same. the second thing,we pallets with thin boards, we have pallets with thick boards. if you are trying to getthese for free, sometimes you have no choice. but, the wider boards tended to be more comfortableas a seat. just be aware of that. again it is something else to look at as you are tryingto find these old pallets to make your sectional couch out of. second thing or third thingexcuse me, i already did the second thing. these pallets, what are they made out of?well, if they are made out of pine hopefully
they are still going to be lasting a goodwhile for you. i think all of these pallets are treated to be outdoors. but a lot of theseolder pallets especially these grey weathered pallets my wife likes to use in our projects.they tend to be made out of oak which is really hard. because of that toughness of the oak,you are going to want to make sure that on your supply list for this project you includesome drill bits so that you can pre-drill any holes that you might need if you haveto nail these boards down a little bit more on the surface to tighten them up if theygot loose through their life of work. you might even need to pretrial some holes toscrew all these boards together because you might snap some screws trying to go into youroak. ok, fourth thing, when you go to build
your sectional couch you need to be awareof the size of the cushions that you are going to use. so go to your local outdoor hardwarestore or patio store and find some cushions that you feel would like on your sectionalcouch. the ones that we used in this picture of our friends final couch project that wedid for them, we used 22 by 22 inch square cushions that were about 4 of 5 inches thinkwith some really nice density. we had gone through many cushions trying to decide whatwe were going to put on the couch. the thinner cheaper cushions really made an uncomfortableseat because your butt kind of sunk into these gaps between the boards. it really was notthat comfortable. so, be aware of the cushion that you are wanting to use for your sectionalcouch before you start designing it. that
might affect how you build it. but, with 20inch square cushions if you can find those or like we used the 22 inch square cushionswe used seven for our entire couch. they fit pretty nice. what we are going to do buildthis couch is to...it sounds really simple. we are just going to cuts these two palletsinto four halves. that is going to make one of our sections. three are going to give youthe base and the fourth is going to act as the back of the seat. the seat back is goingto be at an angle. what i did, and you will see through the project, i hid the 2x4's insidethe pallets so they didn't stand out too much when you see the final project done. thatis what is this third pallet here is four. i am going to disassemble this pallet. i amgoing to use it as a table for the first part
of this project and then i am going to disassembleit and use these 2x4's as support for the back of our sectional or the back of our seatof this couch. the supplies that you need for this project is a circle saw. this onehas a 7.25 inch blade. that will allow you to cut all the way through the pallet in twopasses, one on the top and one on the bottom. some circular saws only have a 6.5 inch blade.in that case you are probably going to need a hand saw to finish cutting through the pallet.you are going to need a tape measure. a pencil of course and what are these...safety googlesas you are doing your cuts. the previously mentioned drill bits and electric drill orscrew gun. a right angle that you might find handy to make your lines or just use a bigol piece of wood to make your straight lines
or marks as you get ready to cut these palletsin half. you are going to want on that screw gun if you would like to hide the screws asyou try...not try but as you assemble your seat, get one of these extenders that havea slider sleeve on it to allow you some extra reach in the pallet as you screw it together.you can pull this out and hold the screw onto your magnetic bit. that is also what is niceabout these extensions. it makes is much easier to not lose your screws. see that holds yourscrew as you get ready to put it into your pallet and screw your wood together. ooohhhok. screw down. so it is not perfect but it does help. lastly, i think i have taken careof everything, is once you get your first seat done of your sectional. and we wouldall like to be comfortable. if you angle that
back, make a jig so that the angle of allof your other parts of your sectional couch are the same. i will give you the measurementsof this little jig that i made for the seat back as we go through our project. let's makethis easy for you, as easy as we possible can. oh!!! yes, you might also want to havea crowbar handy incase you would like to use some of the boards in the back of these palletsto fill in the gaps on the front, or just need to as you see me disassemble this pallethere, these pallets are also made of twisted nails. they are really good if you want tonot have your pallet fall apart as it is getting used in the warehouse or whatever, but thosetwisted nails make it very hard to pull these boards apart without breaking them. we willdo our best that we can if needed with a crowbar
and a hammer, trying to pop those apart withoutbreaking so that we have some boards that are usable. so let's get on to cutting thesepallets in half and creating this one seat of our sectional couch. bam!!! nananananana...so with our first pallet laid down here we are going to mark off the middle of this pallet.again these pallets are 48 inches long. so just to cut it down the middle i am goingto mark off, put a line at the 24 inch mark to cut this half. i am using this pallet asthe seat and the seat back because i think these wide boards are going to be more comfortable.now on the first pass on the top of this pallet i am not actually going through any boards,so you know, using this straight edge is not really necessary. when i flip this over thereis a board in the middle that i am going to
want make a straight cut through. that iswhere this comes in and here we go. now one thing to be aware of when you are workingwith circular saws is that they are very dangerous. i should have said something before i startedto making these cuts because i saw it happen here in the second board even though i fastforwarded the video. i got a little bit of a kick back. i started making my cut a littlebit crooked and it wanted to jump back at me because of that. so you want to make surethat you have a really really good grip on this circle saw and you are very very carefulwith it. another thing, i don't know if i am going to need to do it with this project,but if you need to cut any of the boards off the back of these pallets to do the assemblywhen you assemble the back of the seat with
the seat bottoms along that 2x4, you may geta little bit of a kick back as you are cutting the boards out the pallets. again make surethat you have a really good grip on that circle saw as you are using it. don't forget thesafety googles. also when you put your circle saw down make sure that you unplug it so thatno one hits that trigger not knowing that it was plugged in. obviously you don't wantthem to hurt themselves or you. ok, giving myself a bit of a sawdust shower there. itis probably not be a bad idea to wear a dust mask either just as a tip. there we have ourpallets cut in half. now, i missed a little bit there. you can clean that up with a handsaw or you can just go at that a little with your circle saw again to straighten that up.these cuts are going to be the back of the
couch, it would be better if you hit themexactly, but if you don't no one is really going to see it. it is going to be in theback again, in the back of the couch. there we have our four halves. alright!!! so wehave three halves stacked up. this is going to be the seat of our section of our couch.this seat with three halves stacked up is 14 inches tall. if you get some cushions thatare 4 or 5 inches thick at your patio store, you are going to have a perfect height of18 or 19 inches for your couch. now, this is the back of the couch you are looking atright now. what i need to do is remove some of these boards and notch the top board tomake room for the 2x4 that is going to be the support of the back of our seat. whati am doing, is i am standing this board up
and just trying it to line up with the supportof the pallet, get the back of the board lined up with the back of the seat/support and thenrun a pencil line around to make a notch for this 2x4 to sit in. again these boards aregoing to get removed, this board right here is going to get removed, and i am probablygoing to have to make a notch in some of these inside boards as well. what you don't wantto remove, if you have it, this bottom board. because that is going to give you some supportin your seat and not want to rock back when you sit in your couch. as i notch these boardsand remove them from the back of the seat, what i am trying to do is i am trying to dois stay out of the bright parts of the sun light. sorry about the irregular light ofthis video. i am trying to match the angle
of this jig so that again when you make themultiple parts of the sectional couch, you have that same angle and of course it is niceand comfortable. this particular jig, i told you i would give you the measurements for,it doesn't really matter the size. i just put this together with some scrap wood tomatch the angle that i had made with my first portion of the seat. but, my jig is about17.75 inches long, and this measurement is 17.5, and the distance between those two endsis 27.75 inches. i was not concerned with a particular measure of angle here. like isaid, i just made the first part of my couch, liked the angle, then made this to match,and used it for the other four parts. ok, so we have either the boards notched or removedin the back of each of these halves. now again,
this is going to be the bottom board or pallet.we have kept that back most board because we want to make sure this does not want torock back when we sit on it. when you cut your pallets in half, if you don't have oneboard here at the end of the back of these supports you are going to have to pull somescraps out of your pallets and attach some there so you have some supports so it doesnot want to lean back when you sit in your couch. on this bottom board, this notch isin about 7 inches to give us room for that angle that we need. getting our second palletin our stack. on this one i just had to remove the one back board and on the bottom of thispallet i have created a notch that is probably pretty close to seven inches. 6.5 inches inthis case roughly. a little bit less actually.
see, i kind of made these notches just makingthem big enough. i actually on the second pallet when i went to dry fit this, it didnot quite work so i made some notches on the of this board. that is why it is so differentfrom the seven that is on board just adjacent to it. and bringing in the top of our seat.let me give you a measurement for this, but you saw how i figured out these notches. iput the 2x4 on top of our seat and just traced around it. but that does go in about 3.5 or3.75 inches. now, i am going to get my screw gun with my screw driver attachment there.grab my 2 and a half, or 3 inch deck screws would probably be even a little bit better.my jig for the angle. let me rotate this around a little bit for us. instead of using thosegrey board, i had two that matched so we went
ahead and did pull off some of the boardsof this pallet like i said earlier in our video. i am going to bring this up here, slideit into our notches, match it with the angle of our jig. woooow, hello. this would be agood time to have a helper. we got it, so all i am going to have to do is hold thisboard as i drive in a few screws. the sides of these pallets did seem to be a pretty hardwood so i went ahead a drilled three holes already. now i need to make sure i hold thisstill and get in three screws. double check my angle and there we go. now as you cut apartthese pallets, there is a gap here because lost one of those little tiny pieces of thetop boards as i was cutting wood away. and you can fill that in with scrap wood if youwant, but you can see the three screws i am
putting here on the side are going into this2x4. that is going to give you plenty of support on the back of the seat. now i just need todo the other side. actually i just realized that i went out a little bit out of order.i found that after doing multiple parts of the sectional couch for our friends that itwas better if you went ahead and screwed these three together once you dry fitted everythingand you knew those angles were going to be right, to go ahead and screw these togetherfirst before putting these side 2x4's in to make sure they stay square. i already screwedthat in, so i am going to go ahead and keep with the pattern that i am going. but, youmight you find it beneficial to do that. another reason why it would be nice to pre-drill theseholes is not only eliminating or minimizing
breaking the screw inside your wood.... woodscrews do have a smooth portion on their shank. that is so that as you drive into anotherboard, it starts to slip in the first board you put the screw into to pull those boardstogether. well, if the length of that shaft which is smooth is not as long as the widthof your board, you are still going to have some teeth into it. so, if you pre-drill yourholes it is going to give you that extra insurance that when you get into your second board itis going to suck those two together and not leave a gap when you are done screwing theboards together. ok now, this 2 by 4 not only going to support of our sink, but it againis holding or supporting three pallets. but i don't have that support on the front yet.let me rotate this around so you can see what
i am doing. there are many ways to clamp orhold these pallets together. see it is kind of shifting off to the right here. you couldput some metal band on the side if you would like. i just, when i put this together wentahead and came in on the side and inside coming in at an angle and brought the screws in atan angle. it would go through the bottom board of one pallet and into the side support ofthe bottom pallet. this is also one place where that extra reach of this screwdriverattachment really makes this nice. ok, i am getting pretty lucky in that this is comingtogether pretty square. another benefit, and i am really kind of showing you the non exampleas i assembled this. if you stack these, as you go can get a little bit of an easier angleon these screws as you put this together.
in other words i probably should have putall of this together making sure the angles are right, then pull it all apart again. thenscrewed this second pallet into the bottom one first, then brought the top one in andscrew it together. that would make it just a little bit easier and then put in your supports.but these are pretty uniform pallets and pretty square, so i am getting lucky with that. great!all we have left to do is attach the back. now a couple of things about attaching theback, or actually i am not ready to attach it, i need to measure this back. if your palletsare very irregular, you might get this all screwed together...even if you are doing asi said screwing these three pallets together first and then setting these back supports...orlike in the wrong order as i did putting these
in first... they might bow out and not beexactly parallel. if that is the case, you are going to want to come back with your screwdriver and loosen up these screws, then get the back fitted, and once everything is roughlyassembled or loosely assembled you can go ahead and tighten those screws all back upagain. if that happens, hopefully it does not here. what i am going to do now is takemy pencil and see that once this is set up.... let me out!!! once this is set up, i wantto have some support in the back. yes the 2x4 is acting as a support, but i don't reallywant to run this all the way to the top. i certainly could. i want to bring it up tothe top of this middle board. i am going to just eye ball this. this outdoor rough palletfurniture. or i could be a bit more exact
and go, the top of that board is fifteen inches,so i am going to come up about fifteen inches or just a hair under and make a line on mysupport 2x4 over here. don't assume one measurement is going to be the same on the other side.these were really not made to be fine furniture. i hope you consider this to be fine outdoorfurniture. on this side, oh this is really made well, it is 15 inches again. so comingoff at an angle at about 15 inches, maybe a little bit shy just to kind of hide theboard as much as possible. make a line and we are going to go ahead and cut these 2 by4's and i will just have four more screws left to attach to complete this bench. now,what else? i guess that is about it. safety first. alright. get this back up here. thatis it. get my power cord out. yes, i don't
have a cordless drill. can you believe that?!nice thing about these grip-rite screws by the way, the type of head specifically ithas got a t-25 star drive for improved torque, when you buy these screws they give you afree bit inside the box if you don't have that type of screw driver bit already at home.they are also self-tapping. let's see if i can't get these driven in. i didn't do anypre-drilling of holes this time. let's see how it goes. see, that went in pretty easily.but, if you have really old aged oak as great as these screws are you can still have a problemwith them snapping. but, we are doing good. i don't know if you could see on the lastscrew, but hopefully on camera that pulled in quite a bit as i finished driving in thatdeck screw. that is why they have those smooth
portions of the shank of the screw...woodscrew. yeah, when you try to use like dry was screws for everything that are threadedall the way back to the head, that is not a good idea. that is the end of this one partof our five part...what am i making again?! sectional couch. i am mr. tarrou. bam!!! godo your homework. by go do your homework, for once i don't mean go do your math homework.i mean you got the knowledge now. go build your own couch out of pallets. bam!!!