Two years ago almost to the day, I trekked twelve miles total downtown to pick up eight giant pallets which I then pushed back up a huge hill to our little California apartment. I borrowed a hand truck from a local furniture store to go back and forth from the shop where I was picking up the pallets to our apartment six times. 

Two days later I was in the hospital with a 104.4 degree fever because I had already been sick and apparently I didn’t rest enough to get better.

Oops.

But the pallets were for a good cause. We sanded them, stained them, and built couches because we were so broke we couldn’t afford to buy even a used one.

Really, considering our past carpentry experience (none), the sofas turned out quite well, and whenever we had company over they were a great conversation piece. Those sofas were our first piece of furniture and while they were hardly professional quality, we had poured hours into them and we were so proud.

Since then we’ve moved across the country to North Carolina and we’ve grown enough financially that we can now afford to buy sofas. Pictured about is the house we are now exceedingly proud to own and while it’s not our forever home, I absolutely adore it. It’s open concept with lots of windows, 30ft vaulted ceilings, four bedrooms, a beautiful kitchen, and all sorts of custom touches–absolutely the perfect size and style for our family.

There are a few things we want to do with it, but most of the work we want to do will go into the kitchen. Nothing drastic, all just small changes, but the main thing that always stood out to me when I looked across our living room into our kitchen is how sad our drywall peninsula was. Just white. Not even a pretty, bright white–a boring, generic, off-white. Sad.

One long weekend with nothing planned, my husband and I decided it was time to do a project. It was an easy choice which one would come first–the peninsula was a totally obvious pick. We discussed painting it but ultimately we wanted to go with a more rustic look, deciding that reclaimed wood would be perfect.

In our spare room upstairs, our old disassembled pallet sofas sat forlornly in a corner, forgotten. There was no place for them in our house but they were near and dear to our heart and we couldn’t bear to simply toss them out, so we sawed them down to size (read: my husband sawed them down to size with only a hand saw) and I stained each piece.

The next day, while the husband was at work, I stained our peninsula so any white that wasn’t covered perfectly by wood wouldn’t show through. When he came home, we tried to glue each piece of wood to the drywall with Liquid Nails, which we read on a DIY blog was the most effective way to attach planks of wood to a solid surface, and it was completely useless due to how the pallets had warped over time. In the end, we chose nails instead. You can’t go wrong with a hammer and some big nails.

Because our work was hardly professional, we needed trim to cover up our poorly measured planks of wood. Hubby was out of town for the week so little man and I took a trip to Home Depot to measure out trim. I am pleased to say that I made the measurements correctly and when we got home, I (not my husband, for once!) sanded down each piece, cut it to size, and stained it. It took all the math I could remember but I worked out the angles and besides accidentally cutting the main baseboard in half, I didn’t make any major mistakes.

When the husband came home after a week in the field, I couldn’t wait to tell him that I had, in fact, played my part in the peninsula project.

Finally, two weeks after the project began, we nailed our trim up, attached the corbels, and covered up all our mistakes.

I am so proud!

Our shining moment was last weekend when a friend came over and noticed our refinished peninsula.

“How much did you guys get it done for?” he asked.

It’s not perfect. In fact, the wood is chipped in places–it’s clearly reclaimed wood. There are imperfections. I didn’t measure everything perfectly and there are still a few kinks that need to be worked out with the trim. But it turned out so well our friend thought it was professionally done. That moment when we could look back and tell him we did it ourselves was a wonderful one.

Next, our ugly countertops need to go. I would love marble, but I’m sure we’ll end up with something more cost effective like quartz–anything would look better than gray laminate, so I won’t be too picky. Then new hardware on our cabinets, backsplash, new light fixtures, and additional upper cabinets will complete our kitchen. For now, though, the peninsula is enough–it’s made our whole kitchen look finished.

I’m so proud; I really am.

My favorite part of our peninsula is the story behind it. It’s finished with old pallets but not just any old pallets, California pallets that I hauled by hand twelve miles. Blood, sweat, and tears have gone into this project, y’all.

God has blessed us immensely with this house. We intentionally bought a big house because we love to open our home to people, whether it be family passing through, Marines who haven’t had a home cooked meal in months, or friends we haven’t seen in years. I’m proud to show it off and I’m proud to be able to tell people look how good God is. 

If you wanted a how-to post, I’m sorry. I am not handy and I couldn’t give you a step by step list because we really kind of just winged it, but it goes to show that little home projects are easy and make a huge difference to the way a home looks and feels. Even looking over now from my makeshift home office in the corner of the living room, I smile because we did that. 

I am thankful our family gets to call this place home. It might not be our forever home, but really, with the life that we live, we might never find that place on Earth–our forever home might only come when we reach Heaven.

Still, this place is home for now, and it’s perfect.