Fit very heavy mirror to brick wall

[twg]

Hello,

This is my first post, I would really appreciate your assistance and advice for my heavy mirror challenge.

I've bought an old large wooden mirror 1160mm wide, 35mm deep, 1700mm high. I estimate it to be around 50kg - so heavy!

I need to fit this to a brick wall (old wall, but brick work in decent condition). But the wooden frame of the mirror is not in great condition, and I would not trust screwing through it into the brickwork to hold its weight.

Therefore, I am thinking of fixing a wooden shelf underneath the mirror, about 50mm deep, same width as mirror, and I guess around 30mm high. Would propose fixing 5 screws evenly spaced along the length of this shelf. As the "shelf" would be 50mm deep, I guess would go with 100mm screws into wall plugs, having drilled 50mm deep holes in the brickwork. I would also have some non-load bearing attachment at the top of the mirror to the wall, so it wouldn't just be leaning.

But I've never done anything like this before. Does anyone have any advice as to whether the shelf is the best approach? And also whether putting a screw all the way through the 50mm wood into the brickwork would work ok, or if I should be going for a different type of fitting. Is there a minimum height for the shelf, is it's to be 50mm thick, and I want to put a screw all the way through?

I'm anxious that if this mirror comes down, it's going to cause real damage to anyone/thing in its way, so keen to play safe, and very secure.

Any help anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Jackrae]

Alternatively you could fit some god quality steel angle brackets to the wall such that the vertical part is up behind the mirror. If you use 4" brackets you will need to cut off a couple of inches or so of the tongue that sticks out so that it doesn't project beyond the mirror frame.

 

[bernardgreen]

The load bearing shelf needs to be in direct contact with the bricks If the wall has plaster or plaster board on it then the length of screw between wood and brick may bend as plaster offers no support.

A thicker shelf ( vertical measurement ) with the screws close to the top will reduce the bending effect on the screws.

Use a hard wood as over time a soft wood may distort around the screws and loosen the grip.

 

[wkdhd]

I've got one of those, I can barely lift it.
I have to attach mine to a plasterboard wall which is worse, the mirror could easily pull all the plasterboard off.
What I'm going to do is to make a thing a bit like a ladder with a narrow shelf at the bottom to stand the mirror on. This way all the weight will be taken by the floor, mirror plates will be fine to attach the mirror to the ladder and normal plasterboard fixing will be fine as they just need to stop the thing tipping forward.

 

[twg]

Thanks for the advice. I'll look at heavy duty angle brackets, to see if I could use these. Fortunately I'm going straight into the brickwork, so no plaster concerns.

We're thinking about the ladder approach too, as this will be above a fireplace - we considered a kind of mantlepiece. This would put the load on the floor, but as the fireplace is quite wide, would probably need support from the wall anyway