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You are here: Home / Construction / Floating Wall Shelves – They Only Look Simple

Floating Wall Shelves – They Only Look Simple

June 27, 2016 by Bob Borson 29 Comments

We’ve all been there … walking some lonely aisle of despair (with 3,000 other people) within IKEA looking for the Ekby Järpen floating wall shelves. Everybody knows that if you’re cool, really cool, you have floating wall shelves. Except there’s a problem with floating wall shelves that you buy for $9 … they don’t hold up anything other than some dusty beanie baby collection.

The Ekby Järpen shelves are 31 1/8″ long and 7 1/2″ deep and are rated for 22lbs. First off, 7 1/2″ deep?!? … Like I said – Beanie Babies!! And 22lbs comes out to 0.09lbs per square inch (maybe Beanie Babies might be pushing the load limit after all). Bah! You and those 3,000 people don’t really want those floating shelves after all, but you do want floating shelves … what to do?

Luckily, I apparently like to write informative architecturally charged blog posts in my spare time, because I’m going to show you how real floating shelves are done.

the workroom

This is a workspace currently under construction in one of my Dallas projects. The room is designed for one person to use and is 17′ long and 7′ wide. There will be a 24″ deep continuous work counter along the 17′ length and the 36″ deep worksurface at the end down by the wall-to-wall window. Opposite the 17′ long work counter is a big blank wall that will be covered in an erasable marker surface which is coating steel plates – so it also works with magnets. We have the same surface in our office and it’s super flexible. We use ours for holding up drawings and for writing down workflow and deliverable schedules – the homeowner might be writing down workflow schedules … but I doubt it.

the wall brackets for the floating shelves

In order to get the wall shelves in place, you need to do a little early planning – unless, of course, you wanted Beanie Baby shelves. What you are looking at in the image above are steel angles that have 12″ long by 1/2″ square steel tubes welded to them – and then assemblies are bolted to the studs. TO keep people from ripping their faces open, there is a piece of rubber foam slid over each 1/2″ square tube, folded back over itself at the end, then wrapped in pink duct tape – presumably to make them really obvious.

closeup of the welded steel bracket for the floating shelves

This should make my oddly worded description a bit clearer.

closeup of the welded steel bracket for the floating shelves

And the steel tube is continuously welded to the steel angle, which is then attached to the stud framing. The steel tubes are spaced 16″ vertically – ultimately there will be three shelves stacked up above one another on the wall.

the steel brackets for the floating counter top

I thought I would also show the “floating” countertop at the end of the room. Similar concept – steel brackets attached to the wood framing – with similar results. The counter will seem to float at the end of the room but better yet, there won’t be anything down there to bang your legs on. I am not a fan of counter supports that go down to the floor – who is?!?

steel wall supports for the floating counter top

See? Nice and easy supports, bruise-free shins.

the brackets for the floating shelves finished wall

So a bit of time has passed and the drywall has been installed and tape, bed, and floated out. I’m glad I wasn’t around to hear what the drywall guys had to say about me when they got to this room … I’m sure it wasn’t kid-friendly language.

the office ready to instal the floating shelves

A bit more time and we know have cabinets and the counter in place. Basically, this is a home office and as such, the cabinets are mostly lateral filing drawers with a few drawers serving backup duty. The end of the cabinetry, down by the window, is the main workspace.

metal supports for the floating counter top -

Yes, I got down on the floor for you in order to get this picture. You can see the 4 support brackets for the countertop. They are only 1/2″ thick so the chances that you would bang your knee on them is fairly small. Most desks have a 3/4″ thick counter with a 1 1/2″ turn-down edge. Ours are only 1 1/4″ so this is slightly less (1/4″) than normal.

the workroom - lower cabinets in place

Now you can get a good feeling for the layout of the workroom. The wall on the left is where the steel eraser board will get mounted.

the protection comes off of the steel bracket

Time to stop messing about – let’s get some floating shelves installed … all the hard work has already been done, right? Nope – that would be wrong. Now it’s time for craftsmanship and execution. First, it was time to pull off all the protective wraps … which was easy – they just slid right off.

the floating shelves arrive

Now for the shelves. There are three of them and each measures 12″deep (proper depth for books and binders, extremely generous for Beanie Babies), 2″ thick, and 16′ long … in one continuous uninterrupted piece.

floating shelf construction

The thickness was 2″ because the assembly is 3/4″ plywood on top and bottom with a 1/2″ middle panel that creates the gap to accommodate our 1/2″ square steel tube supports. These shelves are white plastic laminate – I don’t like painted wood bookshelves because sliding things on and off the shelves will scrape and mar the paint surface.

unloading the 16 foot floating shelves

Here is a look at what a 16′ long shelf looks like – held by Kirk on the right, and Will on the left. Kirk and Will were responsible for doing our install and luckily for me, they were in good spirits because this was not going to be an easy installation. Do you know how hard it is to navigate a 16′ long anything through a house? It’s basically impossible, so we had to do something a little unusual … we came in over the neighbor’s fence and through the office window.

Easy.

16 foot long floating shelves

It was easy because I didn’t have to do it. I’m also quite sure that these guys were on their best behavior with the architect watching their every move AND TAKING PICTURES!!

sliding shelves over the neighbors fence

sliding the shelves in through a window

shelves almost all the way in

16 foot long floating shelves in the room

It only took about 10 minutes to get these three shelves off the truck and in through the window … which was nothing compared to how long the next bit took …

making sure the brackets are level

Leveling all the steel posts. Each was measured and slightly tweaked to bring everything into the same plane. There are 21 of these posts altogether so this next bit took about 45 minutes.

measuring the angle of the wall for scribing

This is Will’s arm, and he is holding a sheet of 1/4″ MDF, which will be used as a template to scribe the end of each shelf to the wall.

scribing the template with a planer

Once the MDF sheet has been marked, Will took a planer to it and shaved down the edges so that he can use this piece to transfer the final angle to the shelf’ Since this room has a level 5 drywall finish (like most of the house) this entire process will be done for each shelf on the chance that the mud thickness varies between shelves.

transferring the angle to be scribed

If you look closely at the white shelf above, you can see the pencil line that indicates about 1/16″ will need to be removed from this shelf.

scribing the shelf to the wall

Will at work – this was some finesse work because so little had to be taken off.

Sliding the shelves on to the wall brackets

Now it’s time for the moment of truth – the shelves start to get slid onto the metal tubes.

Adjusting shelves for level

And out comes the level again. Sure, why not? We’ve come this far.

Floating shelves strip light

Despite the fact that there is a lot of nice light that comes into this office, the bottom floating shelf has a continuous LED light strip along the front edge. This will ensure that the work surface is well lit along its entire length.

floating shelves end of the line

 

The shelves are 16′ long and the room is 17′ long … this is where the extra 12″ went.

Floating Shelves look into room

And here is the almost finished image. The marker board wall isn’t done, the floors haven’t been finished, electrical and lighting haven’t been completed, and the walls haven’t been painted. Okay, so there’s still quite a bit of work to be done before this room is completed.

The takeaway from today’s post is that something as simple in their appearance as floating shelves is anything but simple. Sure, you can go stick a 31″ long Swedish made shelf that will kinda work – as long as you aren’t really holding anything of size or substance – or you can do a whole lot of work and have a bunch of your friends over to lay upon your floating shelves (like this).

Totally worth it.

Cheers,

Bob-AIA scale figure

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Filed Under: Construction, Design, My Work, Residential Tagged With: Construction Observation, Construction Process, Modern Architecture, modern house

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