Shelving.. the old favorite!

[xxxxxxrich]

Don't know if this helps, I picked up a load of shelving that was being skipped, reason it caught my eye was because there was loads of smoked glass shelves being tipped as well. Anyway the brackets were T section bar, like angle iron but T shaped. the back piece was full length of the wall and had sections of T cut and welded upsidedown as the shelf bracket, this allowed for two shelves to be put eitherside of the support.

Not sure if I explained that very well but the whole thing was VERY strong and didn't look too bad when it was up on the wall with a mixture of Glass and wood shelves. I wish I still had it all now!

 

[sonofwan]

Well it's all up now & I've had me & a mate both about 75-80 kg hanging from it.

In the end I went with some 250/200 mm box section angle brackets that I recessed into the plaster, screwed directly into the walls & plastered over. The shelf is just lengths of 28 mm pine which is 220 mm deep. Under this I made a frame, to hid the brackets, of 32/32 mm battens front & back with struts across to help straighten any warping. This was all mounted & fixed to the brackets & then closed off with 4 mm ply. To add a bit of extra depth, strengthen the shelf, distribute the weight & tidy up the front I screwed on battens of 45/65 mm finishing the holes with dowels, & sanding the top & bottoms flush.

So the shelf comes in at 4120 mm wide, 265 mm deep, 65 mm thick & in theory it should hold about 200 kg. To be tested when I get my stuff out of storage, which is also when I'll post some pictures.

I'm tempted to wax it & keep it wooden but a friend who was "helping" managed to put a cut in the front due to sawing the dowel ends too short. Saying that it should look pretty smart in white.

 

[AdamW]

If it is a fairly minor cut, then you could always try putting some hard coloured wax in there before you put the wax coat on. Be a shame to miss out on a design option because of a slip of a saw!

 

[sonofwan]

well the plan was to paint it white but it does look quite smart natural. I've used some white filler on it so guess it would be too late.

Stick with the plan me thinks, there are some other bits which could do with hiding with paint, like the timber stamps & nails for the ply underneath.

 

[sonofwan]

For those that are interested, as promised pics of the shelf.. now realise I should have asked for advice on a floating shelf.. anyway.. BTW sorry the images are not the best quality, DV camera stills are plain cr@p.

Cheers for all the advice...

Before painting.

After painting. Testing it with all the books, not that we'd put this many on it! The shelf does move at the outside edge when loaded by 3 mm. We decided not to run the cabinets all the way along as it gives a space to put taller ornamental items or a lamp or something.. <sarcasm>Notice the wonderfully straight ceiling...</sarcasm>