Pallet Wood Arch

This arch was built from old pallets for Promdemonium, Ottawa’s radical, community-oriented, gender-bending, bike-loving, enviro-humping, queer-diggin’, slow dancing, big dress wearing prom that you never had.

One of our goals with the Promdemonium decorations was to use all repurposed materials. Not only did this keep our costs down but it also promoted the event's enviro-friendly values.

We needed an arch to draw attention to the venue's second room, so we rescued some pallets from the trash and pulled them apart. We screwed the reclaimed wood together into a pretty simple structure, making sure the two sides and top could come apart for easy transport and set up.

Step 1: Materials

The supplies for this project were very simple:

• discarded pallets
• wood screws

For tools we used hammers and crowbars to pull apart the pallet, and a circular saw and cordless drill for building the arch.

Step 2: Design and Construction

We pulled apart the pallets with hammers and a crowbar.

The plans for the arch were designed in SketchUp, free 3D modeling software. We measured the dimensions of the doorway at the event venue and designed the arch around those measurements.

We wanted to be able to set up and tear down the arch quickly, but we also needed to be able to fit it in our vehicle and through the doorways into the venue, so we built it in three parts: 2 sides and a top.

The reclaimed wood was cut to size, following the plans. We then screwed it all together with wood screws. When we were happy with the finished arch, we disassembled it into the 3 pieces to transport it.

The base on its own wouldn't be very sturdy, but we used sandbags to ensure it wouldn't topple over onto any prom goers.

Step 3: Decorate

After the arch was set up in place at the venue, we decorated it with paper flowers and Christmas lights.

The paper decorations were stapled in place and the lights were just wrapped around the arch (being careful to keep the hot bulbs away from the paper decorations).

Sand bags were placed over the base to keep it from falling over if anyone bumped into it.