Recycle your old wood fence

How to Recycle Your Old Wooden Fence

5 February 2017

If you’re thinking about investing in some good timber palings, railings and posts to build a new fence, don’t just throw out your old one. Instead, check out our ideas for recycling your old wooden fence into items that you can use around your home and garden.

Are you the type of person who cringes at throwing out perfectly good material? Do you see a new project in every old piece of furniture you own?

A Plant Shelf

With a few matching planks of wood, you can do anything. Why not add a rustic look to your garden by building a plant shelf from your re-purposed fencing? Simply cut the paling to the height that you want the shelves, construct three sides and use the rails to hold the paling together. Then use more paling as the shelves.

Build a Wall

While you wouldn’t use old fencing materials to build a new wall, your re-purposed wood has a creative place in the wall-building process. You can give any room in your home a nice rustic look by using your fence materials as a warm accent wall. If you have enough paling, you can easily nail all of your palings to the wall, covering the surface entirely. This look is perfect as an accent wall behind your bed or behind a desk in the study.

Hide Your Air Conditioning Unit

An air conditioning unit, while essential, can really be an eyesore in your backyard. Using your old fencing materials to create a new fence around your air conditioning unit is a great idea. You would essentially complete this DIY project in the same way that you would build any fence. The difference is that the perimeter is much smaller. You could even add a little something extra by building in a decorative rock barrier between the fence and the unit.

Good Strength-To-Weight Ratio

I-beams are lightweight, giving them a good strength-to-weight ratio. They are perfect for projects that have wider spans, but fewer load bearers. Working with I-beams is easy because each beam can be lifted by just one person.

Build a Coffee Table

Wood fencing is a great material that shouldn’t go to waste. Just think of what you can do with all of that lovely graining! Finding a way to make a table out of these materials is a great opportunity. There are many ways to make a coffee table out of old fencing materials. You could make a simple, rustic table using only salvaged materials or you could build with new materials and place the old timber on top for aesthetic appeal – you’ll love the effect that you get from that transformation!

Decorate a Mirror

There are plenty of ways you can use materials from your old fence to spruce up a mirror. If you have a square or rectangular mirror, simply give it a new frame using old wood. A round mirror can benefit from the pointy tops of a picket fence placed around the perimeter in such a way that it ends up looking like a sun or a flower.

Looking for Fence Materials for Your DIY Project?

Sunstate Timbers, Deception Bay, have provided customers with quality wood supplies for customers across Brisbane. If you’re looking to buy timber, take a look at our splendid range at our lumber yard.

For more information about wooden fencing, contact the Sunstate Timbers team on (07) 3171 8430 or via our online form for quality advice.