A Third Place Just Outside the Home

I live in a very small studio with a small yard (1.75 x 3.30m). As a student, I wish to be able to invite friends and have the around somewhere, however since my studio is small and I have a very good deal for the rent, I do not wish to move out. Therefore, I decided to get outdoor furniture for my small yard in order to host small gatherings and have my friends somewhere to sit down. I have been wanting to redecorate for a while and with my landlords permission I had a few difficulties that made it hard for me to start. This is my criteria for success:

1. It had to be cheap
2. It had to be aesthetic
3. It had to be modular and compact or with the ability to transform (to be able to fit my bike or other large objects if needed)
4. It had to be renter friendly AND removable
5. It had to store recycling trash in a smell and rainproof way
6. it had to withstand weathering during off-season
7. The project should result in minimal waste
8. It had to be done quickly and be successful from the first try

With that, the challenge begins!

Tools

Digital:

1. 3D software or hand drawings (I used "Archicad") | Free
2. Dimensions of a standard EPAL pallet

Dis-/Assembly:

1. Paper for brain-storming | any notebook goes
2. a saw (we used one from action) | Had at home
3. electric drill with drill bits | Borrowed
4. Plybar | 7.99 Euros

Materials:

1. 11 EPAL pallets (found online for free or at a very low price) | 55.00 Euros
2. wood protective paint | 149.96 Euros (3 Cans of brown-orange varnish + 3 cans of green outdoor paint)
3. Wood filling | 52.98 Euros (for 2 sets of two-compound filler)
4. 500 of 4x40 wood screws | 11.99 Euros
5. 100 of 4.5x60 wood screws | 9.49 Euros
6. 4 storage wheel | 8.99 Euros
7. 2 Concealed Hinges | 3.99 Euros

Since I was building together with my boyfriend, I needed a clear way to communicate my ideas. Studying architecture helped me turn our yard measurements into an Archicad model, where we could explore the furniture’s proportions and arrangement before preparing anything for fabrication.

Measure and sketch the yard

Start with a measuring tape, some paper, along with a pencil. Sketch the yard’s outline and record each wall length, fence height, where the entrance is, and any fixed obstacles. Measure diagonals to check whether corners are square. Calculate the usable floor area, but keep the individual dimensions: area alone usually does not describe the shape accurately.

Draw the measured footprint

Open a new Archicad project and set your working units to match your measurements (in our case it was meters). In the floor plan, choose a reference corner and draw the yard outline, entering precise dimensions as you go (though a couple of centimeters won't make a difference). Use the Slab tool to create the ground surface, setting its thickness and rising elevation.

Add the surrounding enclosure

Construct the fences at their measured positions and heights. Simple walls work for an initial layout, so you don't have to overdo it. To reproduce the pointed boards shown in the image, create one shaped board with the Morph tool, then repeat it along each boundary using Multiply. These tools support custom geometry and evenly spaced copies and are pretty straight forward. (Graphisoft: Morphs, Multiply)

Build and arrange the furniture

Begin with simple blocks representing the partition, stools, the bench and the table. Adjust their dimensions and heights until the arrangement feels balanced. Then add timber posts, horizontal rails, diagonal bracing, and individual slats using beams, columns, or Morphs. Base board sizes on the timber you intend to use.

Review the model together

Switch between plan and 3D views to check access, spacing, and proportions. Apply pale timber, reddish fence, and grey ground surfaces to resemble the image or whichever suits your taste. Save a perspective view to discuss the design together, then produce dimensioned plans and elevations as a starting point for fabrication drawings.

Before reaching for the saw, work out where every board will go. Our goal was to turn the finished Archicad model into a set of workshop drawings—and establish how many pallets the whole build would consume.

Breaking the design down into parts

Work through the model one furniture piece at a time. Identify each plank, support, and brace, including the boards needed for the floor. Check that the model uses the actual widths and thicknesses of your reclaimed timber. A small mismatch repeated across several boards can change the finished dimensions considerably.

Draw what you need to cut

Prepare separate plans, elevations, and component views in Archicad. Arrange them on drawing sheets at a readable scale, such as 1:10 or 1:20. Dimension individual cut lengths, board widths, thicknesses, gaps, and angled ends. Keep overall assembly dimensions separate from individual plank measurements: an outside width is not necessarily the length of the board fitted between two supports.

Use millimeters or meters consistently throughout the sheets.

Give every part an address

Number the source pallets and label their boards. Our drawings use references such as “EPAL-001” to track material allocation. Add a unique part number for each cut piece, then build a cutting list showing its source, destination, finished dimensions, and quantity. This makes repeated pieces easier to count and prevents allocating the same board twice.

Make the leftovers work

Cutting optimization software can help, but we planned ours manually. We used a “greedy” approach: assign suitable material to a part, record the remainder, then use that remainder for a later part wherever it fits. Account for the material removed by the saw blade and any damaged ends.

Count, check, then cut - or better known as "measure twice, cut once"

Once every furniture component and floorboard had an allocation, our net requirement came to 11 pallets. Treat that as the planned material requirement; unusable boards may increase the actual number needed. Export the drawings to PDF, check the cutting list against them, and label each piece as it comes off the saw.

We start off with a collection of pallets. Depending on how you got them those might be standard EPAL pallets with no markings, or additional markings HT (heat treated), KD (kiln dried), MB (methyl bromide) or DB (debarked). All but one of the above are nice bonuses as they indicate that wood was dried and potential insects were removed. However, avoid MB, methyl bromide is toxic and will release into the environment.

From these pallets we want to extract our materials - that mainly being wood and if you're willing - the nails. To do that we use a combination of a hammer and in-situ problem solving to remove the nails and sort out the wood planks:

1) top/load-side planks - these are good and durable, and will make for our workhorse, but inspect them for damage.

2) Corner blocks - we will use these to tie our structure together and give it stability.

3) reinforcing planks - some pallets may have them, some may not, however these are good to be stored as they provide fallback material for the project.

At this step we select and assort the materials for our furniture - just have piles ready so you can see what goes where. Then we ought to apply our first layer of outdoors protection - and a "short" note on it:

1. Exterior Wood Stains: Choose these if you want to highlight the natural grain of your pallet wood while providing solid moisture protection. They wear down gradually by fading rather than peeling, which makes future maintenance much easier.
2. Exterior Paints: Select a 100% acrylic latex paint if you want to completely hide blemishes and introduce bold, solid colors to your furniture. It forms a highly flexible, thick barrier that handles temperature swings without easily cracking.
3. Clear Topcoats (Varnish/Urethane): Opt for an exterior spar urethane if you need maximum resistance against heavy rain, spills, and scratches on smooth surfaces like tabletops. It locks the wood behind a glossy or satin shield, but it will require sanding when it eventually flakes.
4. Wood Impregnants: Pick an impregnant if you want deep, internal protection against rot and insects without altering the rustic texture of the wood. It is incredibly easy to maintain since you can just clean and reapply a new coat without any sanding.
5. Natural Exterior Oils: Use pure tung or linseed oil if your priority is a completely eco-friendly, matte finish that enhances the wood from within. Keep in mind that they offer the lowest UV protection and require reapplication every few months.

To apply the coat, first sand with 80-grit sandpaper to remove any splinters and then finish with a 120 grit to open the wood spores. I wouldn't recommend going above 120 as some coats may be unable to bind to or penetrate the wood.

And that is basically our preparation. We're left with sorted, stabilized wood material (that we let stay so our stabilizer can cure!) and we can move on to making our furniture.

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The floor is by far the largest investment of the entire project, it will require a great amount of physical labor and might take up the majority of the time. For starters, you will need the following:

1. 5 pallets
2. 4x40 wood screws
3. wood drill bit
4. Hand drill
5. Plybar
6. Scrap planks from other pallets

To begin, you will need to deconstruct the 5 pallets to end up with 5 face plates - to do that remove the bottom reinforcing planks, remove the wooden blocks and extract the nails. Importantly, during deconstruction, do all you can to avoid putting yourself in a situation where you may step or otherwise injure yourself the usually rusty nails. Having sustained an open injury, you may expose yourself to tetanus and other pathogens.

Once the nails have been removed, move to filling the empty holes using wood filling. In our case, we used a 2 part outdoors filling which required the mixing of the two components before filling nail holes with it. Once the filling has dried, proceed to sand all of the planks with either a hand sander or an electric one. Note: right before the project, we picked up a cheap Parkside belt sander from LIDL, despite it trying to tear itself apart each time we used it, it saved us hours of sanding and preparing the planks. Once the pallets and any loose planks have been sanded, cover them in outdoors protective paint and leave them to dry for a couple of hours.

Once the paint has dried, you may assemble the loose planks and form the complete 4 face plates. As a note: when driving wood screws the plank is likely to split along its grain pattern. To avoid this, use a wood drill to pre-drill a hole in which you may drive the screw in. The size of your drill bit may be calculated as:

Hole Diameter (mm) = Major Screw Diameter (mm) - Pitch (mm)

This gives a thread engagement of roughly 75%, which is the standard. Having done this we laid the 4 pallets side by side to fill the most of the available area. This left a roughly 40-50cm gap near the far side of the yard and roughly 10cm gap to the concrete base of the fence. In response, we cut the remaining 5th face plate in two and used additional scrap to make 2 counts of "half length palettes" to fill the far side, as well as using additional thin planks to fill the gap to the concrete base.

In the end, you may also want to sand any place of the floor where there is visible excess of paint which will help to improve the longevity of your terrace. In addition, take care that every centimeter of the floor is covered with the protective outdoors pain as this part will see a lot of moisture.

Our approach here is to use it for aesthetics, we plan it to fit 2x of 60L garbage containers which should be able to accommodate a single person and help with the smell. The core idea is that for easy access, the top is left uncovered right now and the enclosure is used as a partition. When time comes I'll be able to move the partition enough to roll out whichever container I need and later bring it back into place.

For the enclosure/partition you will need the following:

1. Full front plate of a palette (reinforcing blocks and the planks that go on them removed)
2. Another front plate, cut the the 2nd reinforcing plank looking lengthwise.
3. 1 thin piece (full length)
4. 1 thin piece (same length as the shorter front plate)
5. Materials like 90° brackets and wood screws.
6. 1 scrap piece, cut to the mid-height of the front plates

Construction is pretty simple:

1. Using the 90° brackets, join the front plates.
2. Join the remaining thin pieces also with 90° brackets, placing them mid-height of the front plates
3. Connect the joined front plates to the planks using 90° brackets
4. Add the remaining piece of plank where the 2 thin pieces meet at a 90° angle, this will be a supporting leg on the opposite corner.

That's effectively it, it may fit as a container compartment or a storage partition - that's up to you.

Our chairs serve a double purpose: primarily they add additional sitting place as well as consuming any leftover material from other furniture, reducing the overall waste.

For a single chair/stool the following wood pieces are needed:

1. 4 thin palette pieces (cut to 50cm)
2. 4 thick palette pieces (cut to 60cm) - a little tip: when cutting the thick pieces, pick the nice ones with solid reinforcing blocks at the end, these provide good base for the legs
3. 4 thick pieces (cut to 50cm), these are to stabilize the chair from wobbling
4. 4 thin pieces (cut to you proffered length, these will define the length of your chair)

1. Connect the 4 pieces with reinforcing blocks using the 4 thin pieces, these form your legs
2. Connect the legs using 50cm length thick pieces (the cross members)
3. Complete the chair with 4 thin pieces on the top - the sitting surface. Use wood screws to secure all pieces and watch out to not penetrate the boards.

The bench helps in a very particular way: since we don't have a lot of space we want to use all the free volume we have - as such these will also have a dry interior compartment that we can use for storage. To achieve that the interior will be lined with polymer sheets as it is the cheapest and easily applicable solution. They can be cut with utility knives and are very resistant to the elements. But before that you will require:

1. 2 full width pallets cut above the 2nd reinforcing plank
2. 4 planks with reinforcing blocks still attached to them
3. 2 additional planks the same length as the height of the bench
4. 3 full length planks
5. 2 short pieces of wood, whose length is smaller than the width of the 3 planks, but larger than an individual plank.

In the pictures you may see 2 full width pallets cut slightly above the 2nd reinforcing plank spanning the long axis of the bench. For the sides we used planks with reinforcing blocks left on them as anchor points and secured an additional plank between them to form the short walls of the bench. Finally, by using a pair of two short plank pieces, we screwed the 3 full length planks into the lid and secured it to the bench using concealed hinges to allow it to swing up 90 degrees without introducing interference. You may use woods crews for all of the connections, but make sure to use the appropriate length as they may pierce through the planks and the sitting surface.

The table by far is our largest from the furniture ranks - thankfully, it's also the simplest. We need little else than our prepared wood and assemble it like we discuss below - think of it like Lego or IKEA furniture.

One caveat with the table, we don't really have the space to carry it around, so we can make it roll around. To do that we may use a set of wheels with inbuilt brakes like the ones you may see on office desks or chairs. But do note, our planned table is heavy - probably in the range of 50 - 70kg, our wheels have to be strong enough.

For the table, you will need the following:

1. 3 painted palettes.
2. Storage wheels

The ingredient list is quite simple and so is the recipe:

1. Cut the 2 pallets at their 2nd supporting block height (keeping the surface of the load facing planks perpendicular to the ground). Leave the outer facing planks cut to an additional height of the pallet that will go on top.
2. Stand the cut legs, and load the 3rd pallet into the cut slots with some help. Then using wood screws secure the structure.
3. Put the table on it's side and secure the wheels to the reinforcing blocks that see the ground.
4. Put the table upright and move to the canopy section.

For the canopy, the following pieces are required:

1. 6 thin pieces (full length)
2. 1 thick piece (full length)
3. 2 reinforcing planks (full length)

We recommend this step for last and pick the planks from scrap.

1. Take one reinforcing plank and secure 2 thin pieces at the ends and a thick piece in the middle.
2. Secure the 2 thin pieces to the ends of the remaining reinforcing piece.
3. Connect the now complete legs with the remaining 2 thin pieces
4. Load the canopy on the table and secure it with wood screws at the base.

With our makeshift furniture and the new floor we were able to transform the look of our small garden that I will be able to enjoy until the end of my studies. In the photos, you may clearly compare the before and after looks of the front yard and see that it has successfully been transformed into a hospitable area that I can use to make connections with people, relax and decompress as well as enjoy a calm dinner after studies, and it all came from practically garbage pallets that were borderline being given away, though it did require further investment, we believe it was certainly worth it.