I have 9 shelves to put in a cupboard. each shelf will be 18 x 24 inches I priced 10mm plywood and was surprised at a £60 price tag for enough to do
9 shelves. (scotland B&Q)What would be a cheaper (but suitable) alternative and minimun thickness for those shelves. Basically for linen so not any major loads.
go to a real timber merchants to get plywood at a realistic price, usually a good half the price Q&Q charges,
conti board? which is that melamine faced chipboard sold for making shelves out of, is the cupboard an airing cupboard by chance? they usually use slatted shelves to allow the heat to circulate and air the linen placed on the shelves, even if it's not an airing cupboard with an immersion heater in it, i'd personally make slatted shelves for storing linen on, reduces the chance of it going mouldy where it's sat on a solid shelf and a bit of moisture gets trapped,
Wood would be better... I don't know what 'would' is :-)
If the shelves are for linen only then use planed battening in strips to make the shelves. Like in an airing cupboard. This is very cheap, very easy to install and has the added advantage of allowing air to permeate the linen.
Otherwise use Mdf and get it from a timber merchants who can cut it from the sheet size to your actual shelf sizes. You get a much better edge with it than ply. Don't use B&Wickesbase for sheet materials, they charge the earth for small sheet sizes aimed at the DIYer and his Ford Focus. From Magnet, I can buy a 2400x1200 sheet of 18mm WBP for the same price as half that in 12mm from the sheds!
I'd still go with the batten shelves though.
HTH Deano.
We must have been typing in sync :)
I've seen too many sagging shelves made of that stuff. I reckon you're right re slats though.
MDF is absolue crap for shelving. Buy lengths of par batten that will cut up into the right size for the shelves.
You need brackets with a batten running along each to take the cross pieces r two slats fixed to the walls instead, per shelf.
Space them out at one batten thickness. Put a bevel/bead on them with a plane or coarse sand paper.
18 x 24 inches is a small enough sized shelf to allow thin battens if they are any cheaper but I doubt that you need so many it makes a difference. As a rule of thumb you need a bracket every 3 feet for a shelf 1" thick. (Double that won't be enough with MDF and it no cheaper than other board.)If you buy a sheet of board to make them, use chip-board it is a lot cheaper than conti-board. B & Q will cut it twice for you for nothing (or used to, IIRC) then charge for each cut afterwards. You can cut more than one thickness though. So the second cut will give you 4 pieces; 4 easily car portable 2 x 4 feet lengths.
Why not just use 50x25 pse, fitted with a 25mm gap between each piece ... way I would do it.
50x25 pse....pse?
any rigid sheet material is good for this. Chipboard is cheapest.
Thanks for all the advice. It is for 2 cupboards and on further questioning she now reckons one wont have linen but just storage, the other will be mostly linen. So proably do one with sheeting shelves and the other slats.
On the subject of slats I seen an idea on a bed where the slats are connected with a thin piece of material and only the first and last slat were screwed, the material held it all in place and lined up.
Anyhow thanks again for your help.
For linen/towels I bought some chrome or stainless wire racking from Rapid Racking.
MUCH better than wood. Or make slatted shelves. That way any resdidual dampness gets out.
Think I used 2x1 PAR to make them. Fine across a 600mm span.
Its OK if braced, but its not structurally stiff in bending. And it may stay bent.
+1
If you want one or two shelves for "bits" that might fall through slats, go for 6 mm ply with a wood stiffener front and back.
I have built several wardrobes, with shelves out of MDF and properly braced and supported it's fine and it takes paint nicely, including the end grain
- if painting is required as mine usually are, although I have used veneered MDF on a few occasions, walnut being the nicest. But like-I-said... Slats are the easiest Route and just pin them to the wall battens or use mitre fix which will detach with a short sharp tap if you need to remove them in future for access and then refix.
18x24" 12mm chip supported on 4 sides will take a lot more than linen without sagging.
NT
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