Maybe daft question - Putting shelves up

sancho

Am planning on putting up some shelves in one, or possibly both, side(s) of a chimney breast. I have some scaffold boards left over from a project in the garden last year and have cut one to size, planed it and it looks pretty good. Planning on staining them the colour of my new dining room furniture which is coming next week.

My (possibly stupid) question is how to put them up in the alcove, the only option I can think of is to put 2x1 battens on the left, right and rear of the alcove then sit them on top. The only problem is that there will be some ugly battens on display, and presumably the screw heads on display. and unless I'm spot on, which invariably i'm not, there is likely to be gaps all over the place

Is this the only choice?

Thanks in advance

vaio

A nice method is to screw some 15 x 15 battens to the wall and then cut a suitably sized groove in the ends & back of the shelves so they will slide over (and hide) the battens.

Gives a good finish with no visible fixings. Think long & hard about using scaffold boards, they tend to be made from the crap end of the wood spectrum that wasn’t good enough for making pallets out of.

ormus

or use concealed shelf brackets.
about 3 quid per pr.

SailorSam

Be careful where you drill. Are there any sockets or lights in the alcove.
I'd make a 'floating shelf' using the Ormus brackets

wallbash

Using 'using the Ormus brackets' I can see a few problems . Your initial holes in the shelf have got to be very accurate, have you a pillar drill?

I would go back to using

2x1 battens on the left, right and rear

Make the side battens short, and countersink the holes ( even buy a pellet drill)
Fill holes!

laxeylady

We did the batten thing in breast alcove in last house. We filled the screw holes and painted the battens the same colour as wall. I never found them too naff looking. We used ikea wood worktop leftovers for the shelves though.

sancho

I think the floating idea is nice, but I'm afraid my drilling will be nowhere near as accurate as it would need to be.

I suppose if I angled the front of the battens they would be less noticeable. Was planning on countersinking the screws, how noticeable would filler be if I am planning on staining, rather than painting, them?

The space is about 90cm wide by 14cm deep. So not a massive piece of wood. They are a bit 'roughed up' but I quite like that about them. Not planning on filling the shelves with encyclopaedias, a few paperbacks, a few DVDs, photo frames etc. The boards are pretty thick, could they possibly not cope with this?

Would I need to screw the boards/shelves to the battens? Or could they just sit on top and be held down by the contents of them?

wallbash

Should imagine the weight of the board would keep there.
I suggested a pellet /plug cutter , but they work better on hardwood .
Just have the screws deeply countersunk, or a better way would angle the screws away from the front

( I know what i mean ... wish I could explain it!)

tony6403

Scaffold boards should meet the requirements of BS 2482 and offcuts should be more than capable of supporting shelves.
Indeed ,they would be vastly superior in terms of strength to the concealed metal prongs which are not suitable for any heavy loads ( I suppose it depends what you intend to put on your shelves ).
I would go for batten supports. These can be made to be visually acceptable if you put a radius on the front edges and you can get hold of a router to put a decorative profile on the visible parts.

wallbash

This is a DIY section of the forum , do we require to now know what BS 2482 standards are to put a shelf up? Lets KISS.

( I suppose it depends what you intend to put on your shelves ).

a few paperbacks, a few DVDs, photo frames etc. was the info supplied.

ormus

if a lump of wood can support two builders and a pile of bricks, 20ft in the air, itll do for your collection of readers digest.