Any tips - fitting shelves to lath and plaster walls?

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We flippantly bought some Ikea Mosslanda picture ledge shelves to put up in the office, forgetting the complete travesty that is the wall situation. House built 1903, when we refitted the bathroom (on the other side of the wall), we could see all the lath and plaster. On the bathroom side it is now plasterboarded and re-plastered, but I guess where we want to fit the shelves it is old plaster and lath

Borrowed a multi-detector and having a bit of success. Trying to find a magnet to 100% know where we're aiming, but quite worried we're gong to bring all the plaster down when we start drilling. The shelves are purely decorative so won't hold any weight apart from a pot plant and a picture etc.

So err, once we've found the studs what sort of fixings should we be using etc.?

 

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If you end up in the lath and plaster - assuming it’s boarded - then bog standard uno plugs / rawl4all will be fine.

Is the plaster actually going to hold though? I’m worried it’s going to fall down/off when I get the drill more than a few cm in

We fitted the same shelves on an adjoining wall (terraced house) and no real issues. But there’s brick there. Unsure if I got into the brick mind..

Just reconsidering if it’s worth the stress I don’t need the shelves, they’re purely for aesthetics..

 

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Just drill and use fischer plugs. Plasterboard is way stronger than you think, and will distribute any load on it.

Have to say plaster board in my house is of poor quality.

Be wary of distance between plaster and the actual brick.

As far as I know it's not plasterboard. It's lath and plaster, we saw it all in the bathroom next door (adjoining wall). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lath_and_plaster In fact when they were fitting the loft stairs a part of the ceiling all fell down on them which was.. hilarious.

I have loads hanging from plasterboard, including some kitchen shelving. Didn't use any fancy rawl plugs (well I did at first but they were more hassle than they were worth) , just your bog standard with 5mm screws.

Absolute worse case scenario you plaster the holes and repaint.

I'd say worse case scenario I bring the whole plaster wall down, no?

 

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Yes, I was aware that it was lath & plaster, unlike a few that didn't read the post correctly and just cut lath & plaster to brick, down to plaster to brick

Sorry, I quoted your post as well because I meant to point out that there is no brick. It's an internal wall. The wall on the other side of the room is adjoining to our neighbours so is brick, hence we were fine putting the same shelves up there. On this internal wall I'm expecting a crumbly layer of plaster, then lath(s?), then a cavity?

So would you recommend plasterboard fixing as you posted on lath and plaster/cavity?

 

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So if I can find one stud and can't line up the fixing points on the shelves to another.. would you attempt this? Like I say, I just have visions of the whole wall (or a chunk at least) coming down on me once I start drilling into the plaster

Been concentrating on the garden.. not come back to this quandry yet..