Fitting shelves to side of wall units

What sort of load? What are the shelves made of? How about using a floating shelf mount off the rear wall?

Bob

Add a batten to the wall, to support the back of the shelf? Drilling through to use dowels should be fine though.

lol

A lot will depend on what you wish to use the shelves for ... heavy books or a few condiments. I filled the gap in our kitchen cabinets by just screwing some short thick screws into the cabinets and then laying the shelf on top and marking the position of the screw in relation to the shelf and then carefully cutting an insert for the screw to slot into. A nice long T. You could grind the side of the screw so you've more of a P shape than a T shape

If you need a bit of extra support a baton at the back may give you some extra support and should be hidden by its position.

Ash

Thanks for the help so far. The shelves will be cut from spare door fronts which were bought from B&Q. The back is glazed to allow light into an adjacent room so no place to fix any batten to the back only on, or through, the side of the wall units. Not thought about possible weight other than a few light'ish weight ornaments. No books or anything anywhere near that heavy.

========================================= For reasonably light use:

Cic.

No, no no! They are horrible plastic. Isaac Lord (and I am sure many other suppliers) sell nice chrome (or maybe nickel) plated ones.

IIRC they take a 5mm hole. There are also larger ones (for which you can buy sockets).

I strongly advise you to fit them on the assumption that there will be a heavy load one day - when everyone's forgotten they're only held up with blue-tac or similar....!

Yes Martin a good point.

Ken

I must be thick as never thought of these!!!!

Thanks

Ken

Thanks food for thought. I spent ages in B&Q last Wednesday looking for ideas but it was busy and short staffed so never had chance to talk to one of the 'experts'. There are two guys who are very good but were not around on that day.

Ken

If you put shelves in, and 'stuff' on the shelves won't this obscure the glazing?

Look at the way the shelves in the units are supported. Normally by four little plastic or sometimes metal supports that just plug into holes in the side panels. Think about the weight of pots, pans, plates etc that get stacked in there.

Go buy a pack of these, carefully drill holes of the correct size, pop them in, job done. As long as you do not want the bottom one level with the base of the cabinets (you said one near the bottom) it will be a simple job. Using a bit of tape on the drill bit to set the depth of the holes will help in not accidentally drilling right through.

Mike

Long story but I am putting plywood panel to cover the glazing but don't want to permanently remove the glazing as the next owners if we sell may see it as a good feature. Hence having no back fixing opportunity. We all have our quirks ;-)

Thanks - I will have a poke around B&Q next Wednesday now I have my over

Ken

Quirks are good

If you are putting in a plywood panel though you do have the potential of putting some extra support strips across the panel to support the back of the shelves if you think you will need them.

I'd go for the same system that the internal shelves use as others have suggested.

Yep good thinking and will go for the internal shelf system.

Thanks to you all.

Ken

PS I will update when the shelves fall down ;-)