Create An Affordable Wood Pallet Basketball Hoop For Outdoor Fun

Whether it's to get in some free throw practice or to teach the neighbor's kids how to shoot a layup, having a basketball hoop in your yard is a great way to have fun outdoors. Instead of buying a prefabricated backboard from a sports retailer, you can make your own out of recycled pallet wood. TikTok user motivatedbymylan shared a timelapse of the simple process, and the results are really cool. 

There are so many great DIY furniture projects and creative wall decor ideas that utilize recycled wood from pallets, so the practice you get on this one will pay off big time. The materials needed to complete this project in about an hour (drying time not included) are a circular saw, a box of 1 ½-inch wood screws, wood glue, a claw hammer for removing nails, a roll painter's tape, a small can of wood stain, black paint, at least 11 feet of 1x2 lumber, a basketball rim, and one standard size wood pallet. If you don't know where to find free pallets, try asking at your local hardware store, construction sites, or on sites like Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. Alternatively, you can buy reclaimed pallet wood from places like Home Depot, Ebay, or Etsy.

A regulation backboard is 48 inches tall by 72 inches wide, but these instructions are for a backboard that is 20 inches tall by 44 inches wide because standard pallets use 4-foot-long 2x4s. With the top facing boards of the pallet running horizontal in front of you, use a circular saw to cut 2 inches off of each end to remove the vertical bracing boards, which are called stringers. Separate the top boards from the remaining center stringer by removing the nails. Use the saw to cut the bottom facing boards to match the 20-inch top boards. Arrange 11 pieces of 2x4 pallet boards side-by-side. Glue them together and frame the outer edge with four pieces of the 1x2 lumber. 

Attach the frame to the front of the backboard using screws. For added support, nail or screw four pieces of evenly-spaced 1x2 boards to the back. Next, form a 1-inch border around the front of the backboard and create a 20-inch wide by 14-inch tall square in the center using the painter's tape. Stain the surface of the wood. Once dry, remove the tape, and paint both the center and outside rectangles where the tape used to be. The final two steps of the build are to attach the rim (which you can find secondhand on the same marketplace sites or new on Amazon for around $80) and to bolt the entire DIY project to a fence, post, or wall before challenging someone to a game of one-on-one.