Shelves on sloping wall

[Pennyviz]

Hi

One side of the kitchen has walls that slope at 83 degrees from vertical away from base (measured using my phone app), so normal brackets for shelving won't work without packing. The walls are pretty rubbish so don't want to rely on packing. The ideal solution would be to find a blacksmith that could be bothered to make up half a dozen brackets; Would triangular wood be strong enough do you think?

Penny

 

[Feltwell]

Is this what you mean Penny - buy something like this and just cut the top to change the angle the shelf sits at?

https://www.homebase.co.uk/pine-bracket-20cm_p015070

They should do the job - they'll be as sturdy as any other bracket. I take you've got something decent to screw them into as you mention the wall is not great - if it's lath & plaster you need to find where the studs are and screw into those. If brick ensure you drill & plug into the brick and not the mortar between them.

If they're aesthetically not what you want then I wouldn't have thought half a dozen brackets would be too small a job for a Blacksmith.

 

[MikeG]

The issue with brackets is the fixings into the wall, not the strength of the brackets. You could make brackets from virtually any timber, undersize it, and still end up with something strong enough..........so long as you can get a good fixing into the wall.

 

[Pennyviz]

Thanks @feltwell - yes but I was thinking of cutting some from a 2" thick piece of pine and sanding/staining, might be a bit more rustic, but then so is the wall!

Thanks too @MikeG - the wall has about 2" of various types of mortar - lime, black lime ash and gypsum, then underneath what appears to be pretty loose stone (albeit held in place by mortar) about 2 foot thick - although that obviously depends on where you measure the wall, there's about an 10" difference in width between floor and ceiling. Nothing as convenient as square bricks. Difficult to know where to drill in order to hit stone. Maybe could fill drill holes with some kind of resin glue?

Penny

 

[Penners]

Pennyviz - whether or not your wall has this significant slope, if you're not confident of being able to screw brackets securely to the wall, the only solution may be to use a floor-standing shelving unit. However much weight you envisage the shelves carrying, I bet they'll always be loaded with more.

In view of the slope, you may have to make a unit that is deeper at the bottom than the top if the wall slopes in, or vice versa if it slopes out.

 

[88v8]

Or, depending on the orientation of your ceiling beams, you may be able to hang your shelves from above.

For affixing wooden brackets using long screws - maybe 4"x12s - twopack resins such as there are good in weak substrata.
https://www.toolstation.com/shop/Screws+%26+Fixings/d90/Chemical+Fixings/sd1960/DeWalt+AC100-PRO+Vinylester+Resin/p31236 but you don't usually get much time to faff around, it's a one-way street with the screws not removable, and the brackets will need to be supported for the minutes while the resin goes off.
I've used resin like this and would do again, but one has to be organised.

In the good old days I'd have reached for my tin of asbestos fibres. Rawlplastic. Good in uncertain walls. Still have some in the garage.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/22963204@N00/5650712996/

There was another called Philplug
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C2324932#

If you want that retro experience, I dare say one could find them on eBay.
Or I'm sure Penners has some.

Ivor

 

[Flyfisher]

Resin works well in 'rubble' walls where it's often difficult to drill a small hole without bits falling out leaving more of a small cave! I've used it to secure studding into the wall and then use that for the fixing, but I appreciate that's not always acceptable if the fixings will be visible.

For screw fixings, I'd suggest using resin to fix some suitable wood into the wall and then screwing into that.

 

[Pennyviz]

Thanks all.

Out of interest, if there are any structural engineers lurking - I understood part of the load was rotational against the wall and not just downward. If the wall are away from the vertical so more of the bracket/wall junction can support the load will that help? although obviously some of the force will be to pull the upper screw outward? Always astonished how much weight kitchen wall units can take even if just in plasterboard.



Penny

 

[Penners]

Thanks all.

Out of interest, if there are any structural engineers lurking - I understood part of the load was rotational against the wall and not just downward. If the wall are away from the vertical so more of the bracket/wall junction can support the load will that help? although obviously some of the force will be to pull the upper screw outward? Always astonished how much weight kitchen wall units can take even if just in plasterboard.



Penny

In theory you're right, Pennyviz, but in practice I don't believe the fact that the wall is out-of-vertical* will make a significant difference to the loadings on the supports.

* Or "on the huh" as we say in Suffolk!

 

[Pennyviz]

Thanks all.

Out of interest, if there are any structural engineers lurking - I understood part of the load was rotational against the wall and not just downward. If the wall are away from the vertical so more of the bracket/wall junction can support the load will that help? although obviously some of the force will be to pull the upper screw outward? Always astonished how much weight kitchen wall units can take even if just in plasterboard.



Penny

In theory you're right, Pennyviz, but in practice I don't believe the fact that the wall is out-of-vertical* will make a significant difference to the loadings on the supports.

* Or "on the huh" as we say in Suffolk!

Drat!

 

[Me!]

Are you wanting a rack of shelves one above another? If so, you can fix two vertical battens to the wall, going all the way from the floor to the ceiling and spaced at the correct width for your shelves, then fix your shelves to those battens. That will put far less load on the wall as part of the weight is transmitted via the battens straight to the floor, and also the rotational force that you refer to that tends to pull an individual top screw of a bracket out of the wall is also spread between many fixing screws holding the batten into the wall and the force is also reduced due to the large vertical batten which moves the fulcrum point right down to the floor level, .... sorry, I'm not explaining this very well, ... hopefully an engineer will be along later and give you a better version!

Basically, the longer the vertical bits of your brackets or battens, the better. Firstly because you can get more fixings through them, and secondly because it reduces the turning force that pulls the top screws out of the wall.

So, even if you want just two shelves, one above the other, then fixing vertical battens to the wall and the shelf brackets to the battens will all reduce the amount of strength required for each of the fixing points. Then make your "rustic" brackets out of 2" pine as you described earlier and fix them to the battens.

 

[steveb]

I made some shelves like this once for someone, can't remember why they wanted them sloped, but they did...



You could do a variation on the theme :roll:

 

[Feltwell]

Out of interest, if there are any structural engineers lurking - I understood part of the load was rotational against the wall and not just downward. If the wall are away from the vertical so more of the bracket/wall junction can support the load will that help? although obviously some of the force will be to pull the upper screw outward? Always astonished how much weight kitchen wall units can take even if just in plasterboard.

I trained as one many years ago, and Penners is spot on, unless the wall is a long long way out of vertical it won't really make a lot of difference.

Kitchen wall units should never be secured to just plasterboard, although I bet some are! On new builds they will often put a piece of plywood instead of plasterboard behind where the wall units are to go, and the kitchen fitter just screws the units in to that. Plasterboard on it's own just isn't strong enough, no matter what fixings are used, but if part of the cabinet was screwed into something solid like a stud in the wall then you'd probably get away with it. I hate the way new builds are put up!