Lately I’ve been living a super glamorous existence. I’ve been doing things like driving around in industrial areas, hoping to score. I spent much of this weekend in the garage, and I visited my local hardware store not once, but twice. Not surprisingly, none of this has done wonders for my manicure.

Now before you jump to any conclusions about sketchy activities I may be involved in, I’ll just tell you right now that I’ve been on a carpentry kick. And I’ve got Pinterest to blame. Since we moved into the house we’re renting in May, our bed has been sitting on the floor. I’ve been wanting to build a bed frame and headboard (a version of this one), but with almost no experience in woodworking, I didn’t really know where to start. So I kept putting it off. And then on Pinterest I saw some adorable examples of pallet beds.

“I can do that!” I thought to myself, and I set about finding some clean, intact pallets. Which led to trolling Portland’s industrial districts and Craiglist’s free section until I found some suitable materials. You know your friends are keepers when they break a sweat helping you move around a pile of dirty pallets so you can find the perfect one, which of course is on the bottom of the heap.

The thing is, though, that I had it in my head that I wanted to actually build something, not just stack up some pallets. So when I came across the plans (click the “more” button to download the pdf) for this little stool built from pallets, I decided to make a couple of bedside tables to go with the bed. I figured they would be a good starter project, since if I screwed up, at least I got the wood for free.

And that, my friends, is what I’ve been up to all weekend. Oh, and I decided to turn one pallet into a bench, too. Turns out all of this is kind of a lot of work, especially if you don’t really know what you’re doing. But I think I mostly got it all figured out. I at least have some finished furniture to show for it. Pictures soon!