Christmas Designs

Towers of Pallets

Ryan Murphy from East Hill Foursquare Church in Gresham, OR brings us this tall use of pallets on their Christmas stage.

They were inspired by Zen and the Art.

They bought a bunch of remote control, battery operated candles from Amazon.com.

They laid the pallets down on the ground and made individual pallet columns by running two 2x4x20 on both sides of each of the pallet columns. They made eight of these columns, then used a lift to stand each column up and set them into place. Then, after standing them up, they attached each of the four columns on each side of the stage together. They attached the four columns to their old projection tunnels. Finally, they safety cabled them to their pipe grid for added safety.

They also built a smaller center wall that was five pallets wide and two pallets tall. It was also about 5 feet behind the other walls to create some stage depth.

They made little (1x1x3 inch-ish using mainly used scrap wood) candle stands and attached them randomly throughout the walls. Then they placed 212 of their candles on them.

They also hung a wreath that was about 12 feet in diameter and added a couple 10-foot tall trees that were wrapped in Christmas lights.

They had about 10 guys that helped build the design and it took around 7 hours to get all the walls up and secure – then another 2-3 hours to add the candles.

Total cost (not including a couple of nail guns that were in need of replacement) was just under $1,000 and the expenses were mainly the wood to build their frames (250) and the candles ($700).

Note: They originally bought remote control batteries so they wouldn’t have to turn them each on using a ladder before the services. It turns out, though, that their standby mode drained the batteries each week anyways. So they could have saved some money there.

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4 responses to “Towers of Pallets”

  1. Jake Wandel says:

    We’re doing something very similar for our next stage design. Your post has been helpful. Thanks!

  2. Kendra says:

    What did you attach the candle stands with? Were they just screwed on or removable?

    I have just a flat 10ft high wall to work with and am trying to think of a good way to secure the pallets. Any ideas for me?

    • Ryan Murphy says:

      Hey Kendra,
      Sorry I didnt see this and I assume it is way to late, we bought a ton of scrap wood and broke them down into small (1 inch deep 2 inches wide) pieces then use a finish nailer and nailed them in.
      When it cam to the pallet hanging we actually attached the pallets to as much stuff we could while having them all attached to each other so if something went wrong nothing individually would fall. It worked really well. If you have any questions feel free to send me an email, ryanm@easthill.org

  3. john cloud says:

    Greetings:

    My Church is attempting to do the same thing as you have done with the pallets. There is one question I would like to ask you.

    How and what did you use to attach the four columns to each other?

    Thank you,

    John

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