DIY Chevron Pallet Headboard: IKEA Billy Bookcase Hack

I hate chucking good wood away.

Whenever I need to buy it, I always gasp with shock at the price.

But it's one of the downsides of not living near my Dad's woodyard anymore and his prices are much more cheaper.

So when I started making my own headboard, it wasn't anything like the one I ended up with. I originally planned on copying a hotel design of plain birch plywood with some fixed cushioned sections for the head.

But after my fiance insisted I should use up wood I already had, it meant I had to resort to covering some ugly OSB with fabric, so I shelved the idea.

Then after I ordered some fencing for my last project, I was left with three pallets I couldn't part with and eventually decided to try a chevron table design as a headboard instead.

 

Why I kept procrastinating over it though, was whether I could securely hang it on the wall without the risk of dropping on us.

Thankfully, I had some recommendations in a Facebook group to use a French cleat (as I show in my video below). So once I've worked out how to do this, I was away!

I was fairly confident about gluing and nailing it to a board. I've been hammering things into wood since I was a little nipper. But finding a thick enough backing where the nails wouldn't show through was important important (and not using nails that were too short for good grip).

Then I realised, if I laid out some adjacent strips of my old IKEA Billy Bookcase (more wood I couldn't part with) and attached pallet strips in the opposite direction on top, it would all fix together.

What I loved about this idea was:

• It was affordable
• Gave us more space in the shed
• Recycled to cut down waste
• Allowed me to practice new techiques
• If I made a mistake, it didn't matter
• Used up my growing tester pot collection
So, to make life easier for me and you, I filmed every stage on how I made it for visual learners like me!

But here's a list of what I used:

• Old IKEA Billy Bookcase (extremely common & can be found cheap on ebay)
• Pallet wood 30mm Panel pins
• 40mm Panel pins
• Caberfix T&G Glue
• Black & Decker Jigsaw
• Dewalt Mitre saw (or just use a mitre block and hand saw)
• Makita Belt Sander
• Chisel
• Titan Hand Sander
• Respirator
• Paint tester pots from all kinds of places!
• Annie Sloan dark wax
• Lint free cloth/rag
• Applied with a rag Rustoleum Clear Wax
• Spirit level
• 2 x planed trims from B&Q (34mm x 44mm x 2400mm)

TOTAL SPEND: £10.15 as I had everything else already

Disclaimer: This is NOT a sponsored post, but some links, by chance, are affiliate links that earn me some pennies (literally), if you buy through them at no extra cost.