What do you do when you ask a friend for a couple pallets but they bring you 13 or 14? Well, when you get the look from my wife that I got, you figure out very quickly how to get them off the front lawn. Here's what I did with them.

First, you use three to build another compost bin.

Then you keep three because you want to build an earth oven, and you need a nice insulated base to get the most use out of it.

Then you spend some time with your recipricating saw and trim up all the boards that were going across the pallet. The plan is to use this wood in the earth oven, and since most of it seems to be Red Oak, your smoker when you cook ribs, pork shoulders, etc.

Then, you use the saw to trim off the tops and bottoms of the pallets. These tops and bottoms just happen to be 4 ft long. They will work great, with some stakes to help them stay in place, as edging for some raised beds.

The gap between the two boards will allow some interesting uses for companion planting. I can put tomatoes in the main bed, and carrots or marigolds can line around the outside. Or strawberries in the middle and garlic around the outside if you have rabbit problems. They would kind of be like window boxes, but around a garden bed. (I'll put a picture up once I get the beds built so you can see how this turns out)

At this point you're left with some junky 2×4s that are incredibly studded with nails. If you have a lot of spare time you can pull all the nails (if they aren't too rusty and break off) or you can take them to the city compost facility (where my scraps are heading) and they will grind them up, remove the nails and add them to the city's compost pile.

There you have it, you just re-purposed a bunch of pallets which were destined for compost. You were able to avoid new purchases of wood products and fulfill some needs around your house and save yourself money. Good job!