DIY Pallet Spice Rack

I love pallets. They are free, they have a lot of character, and they are free. I know, I know. I’m cheap – but I’m also a college student, so really, it’s entirely acceptable. Stop judging me. Anyway, back to pallets. Today’s project is a spice rack built from recycled wood. It’s a relatively simple building project that doesn’t require many fancy tools – perfect for the beginner with too many cooking supplies and too little space.

To complete this project you will need enough wood for your rack, screws, a drill, sandpaper, mounting brackets, screw anchors to attach it to the wall, and a saw if you will be doing your own cutting.

The first thing is to measure out your space and decide how big you want your spice rack to be. Our’s is going right above our stove and our desired length by height was 30 by 15.5 inches.

Once you have your measurements, cut your boards to the right length. All of our pieces for .75 inches thick. For our rack we have 2 boards at 30 in. for the top and bottom, 2 boards at 18 in. for the middle shelves, and 3 boards at 28.5. for the vertical dividers.

Next, sand all boards until completely smooth.

Follow the picture above to drill all the pieces together and give a final sanding.

That’s it. Congratulations, you are a carpenter. It feels good, doesn’t it?

You can stop here but I decided to paint my shelf. At first I wanted to paint the inside teal and the outside more of an abstract. Turns out that is hard work so now it’s more of a blackish-gray color.

Note: Please make sure that when working with pallet wood, your pallets have not been chemically treated. All my pallets have been heat treated and stamped with the appropriate HT logo. If you do not see a logo on your pallet, do not use it. As with any wood project, don’t breathe in the saw dust when doing any cutting, and it’s a good idea to wash down your wood pieces with soapy water and bleach.