The DIY Pallet Swing

We’ve been sharing projects, recipes, our homes, and bits of our lives in this space for over 5 years! Long enough to almost feel like we don’t quite remember what it was like before we shared each and every project we were dreaming up. Our pallet swing bed, shared in our first year of blogging has been one of our most popular posts. And we’ve gotten a lot of questions and comments about it over the years. So we’d thought it be fun to share an update on the swing. Plus it gave us a chance to re-style and photograph it with a slightly different background – we had a field of corn to use as our backdrop this time. We took these photos last fall, right before the corn was harvested (literally right before, the farmer was out in the back part of the field harvesting the corn while we were taking these pictures 😂). And then the holiday rush came upon us and we forgot about re-sharing this, but when we remembered, we figured now might be the best time anyhow since so many of us are finally getting ready to tackle some outdoor projects. (Maybe, maybe not for us here in Western New York, we can’t seem to kick the freezing temps and snow/rain mix). So read below for more details on how it’s held up and if we’ve made any changes to it; the full tutorial for how this was made can still be found over on the old post.So in case these photos didn’t give it away, yes, the pallet swing bed is still up in our yard and has held up for the last 5 years. We’ve not made any changes to it other than replacing the mattress that was originally on it and a slight rope adjustment. The pallets are still the original ones we used, you can see they are weathered quite a bit more, the cracks have become a little more prominent, but it’s still sturdy. And it gets a lot of use. Rough use. I’ve got 3 boys and they love climbing and swinging and jumping off this. I do think we’ll probably need to replace the pallets sometime in the future. We use a twin size mattress on our bed and we have changed that a couple times. Our weather is not great around here, so even with the protective mattress covers we used, they still got a little gross and we replaced them (we use covers that are completely vinyl, with no fabric and that cover the entire mattress, not just the top – they zip close). We did also have to replace the mattress covers a couple times because those ripped – mostly due to the little boys running and jumping and climbing all over this bed. I did finally find a mattress, looks like one you would see at a kids summer camp, that was made with a plastic cover instead of fabric, and that’s held up so much better. We’ve had that on there the last few years with no issues. The rope is still the original one we put up and it’s been strong and sturdy. The only issue we had was the rope stretching slightly over the years, which made the bed a little lower, so Mike had to raise it up a little last summer. Other than that, the only change is we added a rope to a nearby branch, so that you can now lay on the bed, and pull that rope to swing yourself, no need to even put your foot down – the epitome of summer bliss…or laziness 😂. And I guess I should give a foot update, as I know my friends will be teasing me…yup, I still swing on that swing with dirty “summer feet”! 😂 My feet became a highly debated topic on a few Facebook threads a few years ago, apparently people were appalled that I had dirty feet (because they can somehow be barefoot and keep their feet clean??!) and I had a lot of strangers defending my dirty feet as well. It was hilarious. And weird.
Again, all the details for how we made this and what we used can be found on the original post – so if you’re making one, check out that post.And if you need an outdoor pallet couch to go with your pallet swing – you can find out how we made one of those here.

-Manda