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Carpentry & Joinery

Floating Shelves in an Alcove

Anonymous user 28/02/2024 - 3.12 PM

I'm keen to have some floating shelves put into two alcoves in a living room. These shelves would be holding up a fair number of book each. (96cm wide wall to wall with books). Thus far two tradesmen have said they'd fit 40mm MDF boards with Oak veneer onto wooden battons secured on all three walls in alcoves. Does this sound like a good approach? How would you secure shelves to the wall and what thickness would have boards to support the weight? Solid MDF or multiple boards fitted together? Something so simple now seems so complex.

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3 Answers

Terry Owen Carpentry

Rating: 5 out of 5
Swanley
building a studwork sub frame from something like 2 x 2 softwood and screwing to the wall on all sides and cladding both sides with boards to give floating shelves is the way to do this job. this will give a very strong shelf and would only need to clad with 12mm boards giving a finished shelf thickness of 68mm. Also keeping down cost of shelves as 12mm board much cheaper than 40mm board
Answered3 March 2015
1

GPS Bespoke Joinery

Rating: 5 out of 5
Nottingham
alternatively you could have them built with the the batons fixed to the wall and the shelves rebated sides and back so they would slide onto the batons , veneered mdf would work fine as there would not be any movement as you you get in timber and would be alot cheaper. but again this depends on you as the customer and 40 mm thick would give a great chunky but sturdy look
Answered23 April 2015
1

Cary Smith Bespoke Furniture

Rating: 5 out of 5
Woodford Green
As answered above, I would run a groove into the back and two sides of the shelf, then machine timber battens to fit exactly into these grooves. Fix battens to the walls, slide the shelf over the battens with a small amount of glue. The battens are now covered by the shelves, shelf thickness should be a minimum of 25mm, up to maybe 40mm. Veneered MDF is plenty strong enough for a job like this.
Answered4 July 2016
0