The Boxes

Creativity.  I have found in my life that creativity is one of the most valuable commodities when attempting any venture.  Thinking outside the box can mean the difference between accepting things the way they are and designing a way around it.  We got married this past October and, due to the pandemic, many things about our celebration had to change.  We had far fewer people (eight, including us), didn't require a bartender (because we had so few people, and that's just awkward), and we certainly didn't need a venue with a hundred-person capacity.

We adapted.  We rented a house instead of a hall, went to a local flower shop to buy our flowers.   All of our favors were purchased within 5 minutes of the rental house and were locally made.  The most enjoyable part however, was the making of the boxes.  We decided that, during our ceremony, we would like to be surrounded by mums.  That's right... the flower, not the mothers, though we were also grateful to be surrounded by both of ours.

Anyway, I got this idea to create some wooden boxes to put some of the flowers on in order to elevate them.  The boxes were just for show and would therefore be temporary, so we didn't want to buy something and be stuck with it later.  I decided to use pallet wood for the project.  A friend of ours also wanted some spice boxes made of pallet wood, so I decided that the boxes could have a third life after our ceremony.

Finding pallets is pretty simple.  Our friend works for a company that ships and receives items that come on pallets, and there was a pile in the back yard of their lot.  However, Craigslist is also full of them.  You might also notice them sitting outside a building; if you call, they'd likely allow you to take them.  They are free and, with some (serious) effort, will come apart.  They are typically made with pine wood, but I also found some made of maple and oak.  Pallets must be strong and durable because they are often used multiple times and over long stretches of time.  The nails are commonly stainless steel for this reason.

Taking the pallets apart was very difficult.  I used a hammer and flat bar to pry the slats off of the runners, and those stainless steel nails really hold on tight.  Ear muffs are essential because hitting a flat bar with a hammer will make your ears ring for days.  All in all, I used eight pallets for my project.  The runners were used for the tops and bottoms as they were made out of 1" - 1 1/2" thick pieces of pine or maple, and the slats were used for the verticals around the box.

Nothing is square, so I elected to spread the slats out.  It gave the final product a nice look, almost like an apple crate.  Everything was screwed together to facilitate easy disassembly later.

In the end, the boxes came out great.  They took an awful lot of effort but used very little in the way of new material.  Even the screws were left over from a previous project and will be used again after disassembly.