DIY Pallet Bed Frame Update: What We Changed & What We Still Love (After 10 Years)

One of my favorite DIY projects to date has been our DIY Pallet Bed Frame, completed back in 2017. As my husband Andy always likes to say, “lack of resource fuels innovation” and that was certainly the case with this bed frame. It was born out of the necessity to be creative with the limited access we had to both project materials and furniture while living in northern Manitoba and from the moment we put it together, I absolutely loved it.

Yet, when we decided to move to Alberta, we knew we couldn’t bring all 10 of the pallets we had used to build our bed with us – that would be ridiculous. The pallets were heavy and took up way too much space in the little U-Haul trailer we had rented to pull with our Subaru. So we decided to only keep the two pallets we had used for the headboard and give the rest away.

When we arrived at our new apartment, we set our mattress on the floor and spent the next several weeks searching for some new pallets that would work for our beloved pallet bed.

The problem was, however, we couldn’t find any suitable pallets to use. They were too short, too wide, or had been built from treated wood.

In the meantime, we decided to set up our spare bedroom for guests and found this economical bed frame from IKEA. While setting it up in our guest bedroom, the thought hit me: what if we turned the bedframe around and used it as the frame and footboard for our pallet bed instead? And just like that our pallet bed frame 2.0 was born!

The result? I love this version of our pallet bed even more! It is much easier to climb in and out of bed, as we no longer need to step on pallets to do so. It is also much less tedious to keep clean, as vacuuming in-between all the pallet boards sometimes proved to be quite the task.

It was also super simple to make. We simply needed to assemble the bed frame as per the instructions and slide it into place so it was centered on the pallets. We have not found it necessary to secure the frame to the pallet headboard, as in our experience the frame has stayed in place well. (We did, however, screw the two pallets for the headboard together to keep them functioning as a single unit.)

When we moved to our current home, we decided to keep the pallet bed, as it adds some unexpected whimsy to our otherwise traditional home. It truly is the perfect rustic-meets-farmhouse-chic bed for us and we couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.

If you’d like to see how this project started, you can read the original DIY pallet bed frame post here.

Have you ever revisited a DIY project years later? What do you still love – and what would you want to change now? Let me know in the comments below!