I am building a beautiful picket fence using pallet wood thet I got for free. This is a very simple project and I am sure you will be quite surprised how fast this goes together once you get started. Each finished pallet picket fence piece looks just like something that came out of the commercial lumber yard.

 

To make your pallet wood picket fence first choose some good pallets with no broken or missing boards. Some scrap pallets can be taken apart in order to repair others that only have one or two missing or damaged boards. I often have to do this in order to save an otherwise good pallet. Sometimes a board has been nailed on crooked or is loose as well. Most of the time I can resuse the original nails and just straighten them and pound the board back in place.

 

Lay a pallet on a work bench or a stack of pallets at a comfortable height to work on.

 

Get on your protective gear including goggles and hearing protection. You should use gloves to prevent slivers when working with pallet wood. My hands are toughened so I just go without now.

 

Choose the best side of the pallet for the top. If there is a broken frame piece then this would be the one you cut off. Any split or cracked ends would be on the top side of the picket fence as these would then be cut off. If a board is split a long way though then I often put this side on the bottom to limit expansion of the split.

 

Next use a circular saw and cut a straight line across the side of the pallet you have chosen as the top. Please refer to the video link below at the end of this article for demonstration. Cut along the inside edge of the frame piece, all along the top of the pallet.

 

 

 

 

 

Now turn the pallet over and then cut along the inside frame piece on the back side of the pallet. This will separate the unwanted piece of the pallet from the part you will use as a picket fence.

 

Now you have the largest part of the job done already. The next step is to cut the angles into the top of the picket fence with your circular saw. I do this freehand because I do not figure anyone will be analyzing my picket fence to see if every angle is perfect. And it gives the fence a more rustic look to keep it a bit rough.

 

I simply take my circular saw and cut one side of the angles all the way across the pallet. Then I come back the other way making the second cut on each pallet wood board. This gives me a nice spike at the top of the picket fence, giving it that typical picket fence look.

 

Now you should have a piece of picket fence that looks like the photo below:

Cuting a pallet into a piece of picket fence takes me between 5 and 10 minutes. The toughest job for me is to find the right pallet and to fix any problems in the boards as I mentioned earlier.

 

Now you simply put your pallet wood picket fence together. I used green metal stakes that are 3 feet long. I pound them a foot deep, leaving two feet of stake above the ground. Then I used baling wire to secure the pallet fence pieces to the stake. I cannot dig the ground here due to many rocks and hard packed clay. I often have to try a different spot even when pounding in a stake on this property.

 

You can use 4x4 treated lumber and properly dig a hole using a post hole digger. Then position the post into the hole. You can fasten the pallet wood picket fence pieces to the post with nails or screws. This will give you a nicer looking and more sturdy picket fence. This type of picket fence should even keep in some farm animals such as pigs, dogs or even sheep.

 

 

I am running a 1 foot high strip of chicken wire through the bottom of each one of my pallet pieces to stop chickens from wandering into my garden. I have a lot of Silkie chickens and they can not fly or jump over the fence. This will easily stop them. The other flying chickens will just have to be ushered out as they fly over but for the most part it should hinder them enough to keep them out of the yard in front of the house.

 

For longevity of your new pallet wood picket fence you should get it off the ground a few inches. I am going to eventually use bricks to raise the boards up off the ground a few inches. This will prevent ants and termites from tunneling through the picket fence and it will prevent rot by allowing the boards to dry thoroughly in the wind.

 

If you are using wood posts you can do the same by just attaching the pallet wood fence pieces a few inches off the ground.

 

A pallet wood picket fence gives you a beautiful, rustic and functional picket fence that costs nothing but a bit of time. You can paint your picket fence white and have the American dream - a white picket fence.

 

You can watch the video demonstration here for better details:   How To Make A Pallet Wood Picket Fence

 

While you are over there please subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow our daily videos as we strive to become self sufficient and off the grid on a budget.

 

Feel free to ask any questions or get help with your project on our

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Troy Reid

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