Pallet Fairy House

A Colleague of mine made a pallet house for her backyard environment. I immediately fell in love with the idea and began to search on Pinterest for different designs. Finding a design I liked, my husband and I drew up a rough draft.  From the design, we determined how many pallets we needed.  If you do not have a source of free pallets, you may try to find a local company that repairs and sells pallets. We located one in our home town and purchased several for approximately $8 each. Our design used seven full pallets and one partial for the front wall.

We went about setting them up to decide which were best used as walls and which as roof sections.

Pallets can be obtained with similar widths and lengths (40 in X 48 in), but we soon discovered no two pallets are constructed with individual pieces of the same width. The challenge was finding ways of attaching them.

We used 4 inch (5/16″) galvanized bolts, washers, and hex nuts for the back walls.

A 2 x 4 was added to the end of the pallet to allow for the next pallet to be more easily attached adding stability and strength to the structure.

This photo shows the need for the added 2 x 4 and how the two pallets were attached.

Number 9 construction screws 3 inch in length were used to attach the pallets to each other.

Corner brackets were added for extra structural support.

This photo shows how the pallets were attached to each other.

2 x 4’s were added to all corners to attach the roof pallets to the main structure.

With a wider pallet house, longer pallets are required to get the desired pitch of the roof. We cut one pallet in half.  Individual halves were used to lengthen each of the roof pallets. Temporary roof supports were added to allow for leveling and aiding in the attachment of the roof pallets to the walls.  It may require up to three people to attach the roof and complete this step.

A 2 x 4 was added at the peak of the roof to keep the pallets stable while all screws were added.

Here the nearly complete Pallet Fairy House is waiting for the final extra finishing touches.

We squared up the roof and then finished the roof edges with rough cut cedar.

To two sides of the pallet house, we wanted to add chalk board panels that would engage our children’s imagination for playing store or for written word practice. Two coats of primmer and 3 coats of chalk board paint were added. The instructions recommended  4 hours dry time between coats of chalk board paint. A minimum of  3 day dry time is necessary after the final coat before use.

Our Pallet Fairy House is completed. Now to enjoy! It is our hope that this blog may inspire you to build your own Pallet Fairy House.

Pam & Tim Stefanich

Family Child Care Professionals