Monday, July 23, 2012

DIY Wooden Pallet Sandbox


Our neighborhood is currently undergoing a period of expansive growth. Homes are sprouting up all over the place, which is a good thing. It's good to see some life in the economy. With construction sites, come large amounts of garbage. However, if you look closely, much of that garbage is very usable and (sometimes) good quality wood!
After observing these wood piles steadily growing, I decided to hop over and ask the site workers if the wood was garbage and if I could have any. I didn't know what kind of wood I would want or what my projects would be, but I figured it would be fun to do a project with it. They waved towards a pile and said I could take whatever I wanted.
Among some other pieces, wooden pallets seemed to be a good bet to me. They were already box shaped, had several slats and seemed pretty sturdy. If nothing else, I figured I could stick some wheels on the bottom and use them to move heavy equipment, as we do not have a dolly.
I started perusing the internet for wooden pallet ideas and saw tons of ideas for furniture, raised garden beds, storage etc. Here are a few. I mean, isn't it wild what you can do with wooden pallets?!




Anyhow, around this time, my toddler was taking a big interest in sand. Sand everywhere. At the beach, the sidewalk, the road. He loved this gritty stuff. So I thought, why not make a sandbox? Seemed easy enough, I mean it was already a box. I just had to figure out a way not to let the sand fall out through the bottom.
I selected a pallet with no top. I had some left over landscaping fabric from my wooden pallet garden, so I just used an industrial stapler and stapled 2 layers of that over the bottom. I set that in a shady area and bought 3 bags of sandbox sand from Home Depot (it is less than $3 per bag...) and dumped it in there. SUPER easy. Probably took me longer to take pictures, write this post and import them than the project ;).




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