Making a floating shelf?

[NotAGolf]

I’ve got a reasonably sized offcut of worktop that I’d like to convert into a shelf. It’s solid wood (walnut) and the size of the shelf will be approximately 500x250x40mm, so it’s a fair amount of weight in itself, and it will be holding some speakers and books on top of it too.

The tricky part is that I want it to be a floating shelf. Is it possible to convert this into a floating shelf myself? I’m hoping I can just drill some holes and attach some fittings, but I’m not sure if floating shelves are designed with this in mind and are constructed differently.

It’ll be attached to plaster covered blockwork, and I can put in as many fittings as possible which should help with the weight.

 

[NotAGolf]

It'll probably just be easier and safer to buy one, I think I paid £10 for a 100cm one from Ikea that came with all the correct fittings and looked professional.

Otherwise it'll just be a case of having a go and hoping for the best.

It will be located close to the worktop though so the difference between a nice solid wood and a cheap laminate job will be blindingly obvious. Buying a readymade solid walnut quickly ramps up the price.

Probably wouldn't be too hard, just make sure you drill the holes straight in to the wood, you can probably get drill guides that will help.

As for the other stuff; I'd just find the heaviest duty floating shelf fixings/brackets you can, you can buy them as single bars or as two bars connected by a strip which in-turn you fix to the wall.
How heavy do you think all the stuff will be? Most brackets seem to accept 25kg per pair so in theory you could get two pairs and have enough to hold the weight (assuming your books and speakers weren't too heavy of course).

Drilling straight enough will probably be an issue actually. Would definitely need a guide of sorts. Weight wise, I can’t imagine I’d be putting much more than 10-15kg on there, but I imagine the wood itself will be ~10kg.

There's probably a proper way of doing it, but having just hung a large oak beam as a mantle using a similar method (see the 'man jobs I did today' thread) I'd do this:

M6 rawlbolts, swap the bolts out for 300mm M6 threaded rods (cut them down a bit so that, say, 120mm (or however deep you will be able to drill) sticks out of the wall) and mount.

Drill deep holes in the back edge of your shelf using a slightly larger bit, so that the rods will slide in. Squirt a load of polyurethane glue in the holes, and slide the shelf into place on the wall.

That certainly seems like the easiest suggestion so far. I’d rather not use glue though. Can imagine that being a right pain to get off the wall if you change your mind!!

 

[NotAGolf]

Your solution looks great Skiddley. The only build I would have for the OPs dot and dabbed walls is to either replace the projecting anchor bolts with something like Rigifix, or fit a nut both in front and behind the mounting plate. The main reason being in order to tighten up the anchor bolts and fix the plate in place a lot of pressure will be applied to the plasterboard and any weight on the shelf will be transferred to the plastboard. In time the shelf may start to damage the plasterboard and drop.

I don't have dot and dabbed plasterboard. It's a blockwork, covered with ~10mm bonding and ~3mm plaster skim.

 

[NotAGolf]

Just had a thought. You could use m8 threaded bar into rawlbolts as said and use a grub scrub above or below thyself wherever is best hidden to lock into the threaded bar going into the shelf so it holds firm. Easy to remove later then

I'm guessing you mean grub screw. How would this work?

 

[NotAGolf]

Slightly delayed response but I finally got around to doing this. I did what cheesy boy suggested and went for the wall anchors and rods. Worked a treat .

I used M8 rods and anchors. The rods protrude 20cm from the wall and the shelf itself is 27cm deep and 60cm long. If I was doing it again, I'd probably use M10 bolts as they flex a little bit at the end, but to be honest it feels pretty damn sturdy. If the rods weren't so long I'd be comfortably hanging a silly amount of weight from them.

Few pics:

Need Amazon to hurry up and add support for Sonos via Alexa so I can do away with the extra cable!