Mr Skill

Floating shelves look impressive in your home, and putting them up is no harder than putting up brackets for a regular shelf. One thing that you have to conscious of is the load that the shelf will ultimately bear – floating shelves are not ideal for a number of heavy items.

You will also need to consider the fixings that you intend using are suitable for the wall the shelf is being fixed to. A local handyman in London will be able to provide special plugs which are suitable for plasterboard walls, or screws and rawl plugs will generally suffice for brick and wooden walls.

Before you start, check that there are no pipes or cables behind the wall where you intend to put up the shelf. This can be done with an electronic detector and it is advisable never to drill immediately above or below a light or electrical socket – because that is where the cables will be!

Place the bracket for the floating shelf against the wall, with the holes in the protruding prongs facing downwards, and check with a spirit level to ensure it is level.

Mark the wall with a pencil where the holes need to go for the fixings, and a useful tip is to put a little piece of tape around the top of the drill bit where it corresponds with the length of the rawl plug.

Drill the holes in the wall and insert the rawl plugs. Tap them in with a hammer and then screw in the bracket – ensuring that the holes in the prongs are still facing down.

Once the bracket is secured to the wall, slide the shelf onto it and fix from beneath with the screws provided with the shelf. There should also have been some hole covers supplied with the shelf, and these can go on now as well.

Putting up a floating shelf is a very straightforward job, however sometimes a second pair of hands can be useful and you may wish to use the services of a London handyman. If so, please do not hesitate to search our Tradesmen´s Directory for a local handyman in your area of London, or use the “Post-a-Job” facility at the top of the page to attract handyman quotes straight into your inbox.

Tags: drill, electric socket, find a handyman in London, fixings, Floating Shelf, Handyman Services, plasterboard, Post a Job, rawl plugs, Shelving, Tradesmen´s Directory

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 12th, 2010 at 9:38 am and is filed under Handyman Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.