Alex (the aforementioned boyfriend) actually works at a hardware store meaning we were able to pick up these for free so I'm not sure how much they would cost you to buy. However, with some nifty searching I'm sure you can find some for not too much.
We used three palettes stacked on top of one another which seems to be the perfect height for a coffee table though if you wanted something lower two would look great. Four would probably be a little overwhelming though!
The first step we took was to roughly sand it down. We'll come back to this later to make the grain smoother but this is just to get rid of any splinters. We left soft loose grain to give it a rustic look, but seeing as this is to be in a living room you want to get rid of any splinters!
As palettes have gaps in between the wooden boards we decided to buy some thin wooden pieces to make the base solid. You want to measure these up beforehand, they should slip in fairly easily but still be secure. You can glue them in but we just left them. You can leave the slats open (I've seen this done before and it looks awesome!) but we just didn't want to risk losing pens and candles and whatnot down the middle of the table!
Now you want to continue on your sanding journey. First continue to sand over the general wood until it's as smooth as you want it. Ours is still pretty rough as, like I mentioned, we wanted it to look rustic. You then want to sand the edges off until they are slightly rounded to create a softer look.
Once you've done this the table is basically complete. Told you it was easy! From here you have some artistic leeway. You could paint a pattern or a scene on it (which would look awesome!), or just paint it a solid colour. Originally we were going to paint it white and blue in a very light wash, but we liked the grain of the wood on our top palette so much that we decided to just rub it with Danish oil to make the natural colour richer and bring out the patterns in the wood. This won't change the texture or finish at all as Danish oil isn't glossy (I think if you want a glossier finish then wax would work better), it'll just enhance what you've already got, as you can see below.
Et voila, you're done!
See what I mean about the Danish oil bringing out the grain in the wood? So beautiful and natural!
I think one of my favourite things about our coffee table is all the stamps that were already on the palette. If you can find ones with stamps I think it makes it look much more interesting and authentic.
I hope you found this useful, if you make one of these please take a picture and pop it in the comments, I would love to see!
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