A recent trend called upcycling or reclaimed woodworking has been growing in popularity for sustainability reasons as well as the chic look of the projects and products.

Probably the most simple form of reclaimed woodworking is the use of pallets. Go to Pinterest and search for “pallet furniture” or “pallet wall”. It will give you quite the assortment of inspiration.

This picture and the one at the top of the post are of a DIY deck furniture build from a great blog Place of My Taste. This furniture was built on a great budget.

My personal favorite use of pallets is when they are used as an accent wall. This rustic modern look adds so much character to a room. This wall is from Pallet Furniture Online. I love how pallets can have so many different colors in all the different boards.

There is some controversy in the reclaimed woodworking world. There are lots of people creating products and projects under the title of “reclaimed” or “up-cycled”, but in reality they are using new materials and distressing the material to appear used and old.

The style of rustic modern has been around for awhile. It is not a new trend for makers to distress boards or furniture to appear older than it is. The controversy starts when they decide to put the “reclaimed” or “up-cycled” tag on their work. The guys over at the podcast “Reclaimed Audio” have talked pretty extensively about this. They are definitely on the traditionalist side of things, but they give a pretty fair assessment of the controversy.

In general I really like the trend of upcycling pallets or other material that are just going to be thrown away and using them in a project. But as a trend the chic look will eventually die out.