Designing my own built-in wardrobe - best way to fix shelves

[LancsRick]

Morning all!

I've got a space in the bedroom that I'm going to put a built-in wardrobe in, and due to the fact that there are a couple of obstacles, I'm going to have to design and build it myself.

The main query I've got at the moment is what material and fixings to use for the shelves.

I'm going to put a timber framework on the 3 walls so a solid structure exists, and then sheet over them with a TBD material. For the internal shelves, I was thinking of just putting in some vertical sheets, with shelves mounted between the verticals using dowels at 15cm spacing. The verticals would go right through to the wall and have a piece of 2x2 either side of them to form a decent fixing, with the top and bottom sheeting for the wardrobe just being the "intervals" in between the verticals.

Whilst working out of solid wood would be ideal, it's cost prohibitive for me really. I'm therefore thinking of MDF with some good old elbow grease on the PVA and preparation side of things, with maybe 18mm for the verticals and 18mm again for the shelves.

Any tips or experiences? Maybe my Google skills are lacking but I've not turned up much!

Cheers.

Rick

 

[MMUK]

How wide are the shelves going to be? 600mm?

 

[LancsRick]

Probably in that sort of order, although if I have a long "hanging rail" section then if I shelve above that then they could be up to 120.

 

[MMUK]

I'd recommend maybe a solid timber face to give the shelves a bit more strength. If you fit a 2" face you could also bolster the underside with some 1" square battens which could also be used as part of the fixing method. A sketch will explain it better I think.....

Fit a rail on the stile with the cut outs in and the shelf just sits into it. No hard fixing of the shelf necessary.

The 1200mm shelf would probably be better with 1" square steel box section instead of timber though. But you can get it in a powder coated finish

 

[LancsRick]

Thanks for taking the time to reply and sketch too!

I'm reading that sketch as the right hand illustration being a cross-section looking along the length of the shelf, with a thin red board supported by two cross-battens and an overhanging face on the front. If that's the case, I might just put one of the battens at the front so that it's not as obvious that it's just a facing piece.

Taking your idea a stage further, rather than have a "ledge" as per what I think your left hand sketch shows, I might just put some 2x2 cross beams in (or steel for the long one) and let the battens on the underside of the shelf butt up against them to hold it in place.

Many thanks for sharing the expertise!

 

[MMUK]

Yes, sorry I should have annotated the sketch. The red is the MDF shelf with the brown being timber and it's a cross section view. The left hand part is a section of your upright with a support fitted to it (maybe made from MDF?).

There's no reason why you couldn't skin the bottom of the shelves with some 3mm MDF to make them appear solid like this:

Just leaving the bottom skin short enough in the width for the noggins to sit into the side supports (shown in green).

 

[LancsRick]

Gotcha, that makes a lot of sense, cheers. No need to hide any fixings then either!

 

[MMUK]

And it also means you can just lift out the shelves should you need to