Attaching a shelf via wooden door frame.

[gizmo1990]

Tough to decide where to put this but since it concerns mainly wood I thought it best here.

I need to attach a shelf over a doorway. I was originally going to attach 2 large brackets to the wall either side of the doorway, however due to a possible electric cable nearby I'd rather not chance it. A solution I'm currently contemplating would be to simply screw both brackets into the wood door frame. As seen in the photo.

My reservations though would be that the lip of the doorway to the wall is 21mm. After that I'm not sure if the wood continues or the wall itself slides into a kind of rebate? Hence part of any holes would be going through plaster/brick after 21mm.

Given that the depth of known wood is 21mm, would that be enough purchase to hold a shelf safely? Ideally I'd prefer an inch but it's not far off. The dimensions of the shelf are 1007mm x 280mm. It's not intended to hold too much weight either.

Any advice much appreciated.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Your door casing is likely to be around 30mm thick (maybe thicker on an older casing) but quite a bit thicker if it is a proper exterior door frame. The architraves are more than likely just pinned in place or fixed with a few small oval nails, but even if glued you'll only have a 20mm wide strip where the architrave is fixed to the casing. All that means that you need to have screws long enough to go through the architraves and penetrate the door casing timber to a reasonable length. It probably puts the centre line of the brackets at about 20mm out from the reveals or 10mm out from the inner edges of the architraves (not good, as that is generally where the thumb nail edge radius or chamfered edge detail goes)

Alternatively, you could always fix the brackets further out on the architraves, providingbthatvyou add extra fixings at the tops of the architrave - four nails per side put in as two pairs skewed at opposite angles to form a sort of "x". 1-1/2in ovals punched under and filled should do the job

 

[foxhole]

Turn bracket upside down and fix above shelf to wall.