It all started when we went to North Carolina to visit Casey's family for Thanksgiving. His mom and dad had secured a few pallets because his mom had a Christmas project lined up for Casey...pallet Christmas trees!
She had seen several versions of these trees on Pinterest and knew we would be up for a project when we visited, so off to work we went! Casey and his brother ended up cranking out 5 pallet trees in under an hour (without sanding and staining)!!
Of course we took one home and instead of going with traditional red and green colors of Christmas, I continued my love affair with black paint and used leftover stain and seal I used for our fence. The Christmas lights were something I purchased on a whim at Costco without a particular idea for their use, but little did I know they would look perfect on our new pallet Christmas tree.
This project requires very few tools and only about an hour of your time, so it is the perfect place to begin if you are just starting out!
MATERIALS
Stain or paint of choice
-Black tree: Valspar stain and seal, solid in Darkest Night
-White tree: Krylon out door paint
Paint brush: natural bristle for oil-based, synthetic bristle for latex
TOOLS
Hammer: Home Depot, Amazon
Circular saw: Lowe's, Home Depot, Amazon
Sander: Home Depot, Amazon, Lowe's
INSTRUCTIONS
Choose which side of the pallet you would like to be the front of your tree. Typically a pallet will have one side with more horizontal slats of wood which makes for a more full tree.
Remove the horizontal slats on the back of the pallet using a hammer or any other tool you have have available.
Use a scrap piece of wood to draw a straight line from the center of the top of the pallet to both of the bottom corners. The end result will be a large triangle.
Cut through the wood with your circular saw following the two straight lines.
For the base, cut four pieces of scrap wood from the pallet to about 1/4th of the length of the base using a circular or miter saw.
Attach the four pieces of scrap wood using 2in screws so that each piece is facing a different direction. The end result will look like a plus sign (see above photo).
Sand any rough spots with 150 grit sandpaper.
Paint the tree using either outdoor stain and seal, or outdoor paint (can use regular stain or indoor paint if the tree will remain inside). We have completed two trees using the above steps. One tree we painted white using outdoor paint, and the other we stained using outdoor stain and seal. The only reason we chose to stain instead of paint the black one was because we already had leftover black stain and seal used on our fence.
Add lights, take a step back and let the Christmas magic begin!
