Odd One Out: Designer Monica Bhandula’s Upcycled shipping Pallet Furniture range

Monica Bhandula

Interior Designer Monica Bhandula uses an interesting material in her latest collection. Shipping pallets. Strange, you say. I thought so too. Monica however, has harnessed her creativity and her deep-rooted belief of seeing beauty in imperfection and creating from nothing.

It all started when Monica was working on an interior site, and she was left with no funds to purchase the main lobby lighting fixture, and no material to clad the pillars with. She applied her tor mor jor skills crafty hands and mind) to create the best out of waste and that’s how the first pallet creation was born.

I had to feature her work here, not just because I am crazy about sustainable products, but also because I love her blend of retro-modern style!

Lucky Lips as Monica has named this piece carries one down memory lane in the music world. It is going into a teenage girl’s room. The table uses one pallet and has drawers in wood with a perforated sheet inner and metal pipes as the base. The motif is hand-painted by a local artist.

The pallet was sourced from her client’s warehouse waste as they were importers and had piles of pallet lying around as scrap. From her fabrication workshop came the pipes, chains and buckets, which created the most unique center chandelier. The moment it was fitted she knew she had discovered a beautiful raw material to create with.

This burnt bench creation makes for a great console table. It’s made using a burnt wood finish technique with melamine polish.

More about the material A wooden pallet is the structural foundation of a unit load which allows the handling and storage of material. Old pallets can be recycled, up-cycled, re-used or re-purposed into creating furniture, garden racks, etc. Recycling is good, both to use and to give new life to an object and help make our planet more sustainable. It can become a strong recycling trend.

Pallets are easy to work on for a lot of creative construction. It can develop shape and harmony by transformation. It can be smoothed from the sides and used to make tables, flower pots, seating, etc.

Pallets being more or less of a standard size, can be used in modular furniture requirements. It can be cut into half & given a comfortable angle for making chairs or day beds.

Pallet furniture can be made trendy by giving effective paint treatments. Often pallets are made from pine, oak and fir. These woods have a lot of character of grains and holes and can be stained with the polish color as per requirement.

Pallet lends itself very well to paint and can be made to look chic with stencil paint, glass insets, etc. It makes sense to keep the “pallet aspect” intact in these creations, for obvious reasons 🙂

To know more about buying Monica’s furniture, visit her facebook page www.facebook.com/artscaledfurniture

She is based in Hyderabad.