Many of the most beautiful tent setups I've seen have a storage chest or blanket box at the foot of the bed.
This makes a lot of sense because a box holds a lot of kit, it's easy to transport and it doubles up as a useful piece of furniture - either a place to set articles you plan to use, or else as somewhere to sit..
We have a couple of blanket boxes we could use, but I wanted to try making one for the purpose.
Shipping pallets are cheap, readily available, treated against the weather, and provide good solid timber. Not to mention the fact that each pallet provides dozens of nails that are better quality than anything you can buy in a hardware store.
Most companies in our area donate their used pallets to local charities for craft projects, but I found a shipping company that sells them cheap and donates the money instead. I filled up my trailer for £10 and stripped a couple of pallets down to bare boards, saving as many nails as I could.
The wood's rough so I planed it down and chamfered the edges.
I made the base first, and added the 4 corner uprights. Then with a few screws and a lot of nails I built up the sides. I didn't do much measuring, the box is as long as a pallet plank, as wide as 5 planks and is roughly sitting height at 5 planks high.
I cut out slots and screwed in a couple of door hinges I found in a box in the shed.
The lid's frame is made from the pallet cross-planks which were twice as wide as the other planks. This gives a slight overhang all the way round which I hadn't planned from the start, but I like it.
For a few evenings' work and around £5 in materials I've got a solid wood storage chest. It's heavy, but I'm quite pleased with it.
Tools used: crowbar and hammer to strip the pallets; plane to clean up the planks; saw, sandpaper, screwdriver and another hammer to put it together.
(Side note - I'm writing this from a hospital bed as I get treated for a reaction to my cancer medication. Photos will come later when I get home)
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