“Tidy house, tidy mind”, as the saying goes. And shelves significantly contribute to tidiness around the home. The practical storage providers allow residents to find a designated space for their books, documents, photo albums, holiday souvenirs and much more. Accessories and personal items can also be stored in small bowls or boxes so they are within quick reach in the mornings.
Building your own DIY shelves allows you to determine their size, shape, construction material and any additional design aspects. The items of furniture can also be made to measure so that they fit into any alcove within the home, such as beneath stairs or sloped ceilings. This also allows you to make us of the full height of the room, so that entire private library collections can grow as high as the ceiling. There are no boundaries when it comes to design – old ladders, metal pipes, fruit crates, pallets, slabs or the body of a guitar can just as easily be used as new materials from DIY stores or specialist retailers. We recommend measuring the shelving unit’s maximum height and width when mounting more than one shelf and creating a diagram of the desired result. If certain objects such as a printers or particularly tall books need to be stored in the shelf then this method will allow you to plan accordingly. When it comes to electric appliances, it is helpful to check beforehand whether any necessary power connections are located nearby. If you opt for wood you should either buy sanded wood or treat it yourself, which prevents the risk of injury. You can either cut the piece of wood down to size yourself using a saw or have it cut to size in many DIY stores. The boards can then be oiled, waxed, stained or coated with paint in various colours or degrees of gloss. Next, simply screw the wood into the shelf supports at a right angle – and done.
Rooms appear to be tidier and larger if shelves are attached to the walls. The right anchors and screws depend on the wall’s construction material as well as the load that the fixture is subjected to. The fischer universal fixing UX or the fischer DUOPOWER are a good choice for light bookcases or kitchen shelves of up to 25 kilogrammes in perforated brick or aircrete. Special anchors for board materials such as the fischer metal cavity fixing HM or the fischer nylon toggle DUOTEC are ideal for gypsum plasterboard. When it comes to warehouse shelves weighing up to 100 kilogrammes, fischer recommends using the expansion plug SXR or frame fixing SXRL in perforated brick, while the aircrete anchor FPX-I or the heavy duty fixing kit SBS M 10 (consisting of injection mortar and the correspond-ing anchor rods and sleeves) provide a firm hold in aircrete. It is very important to check whether the existing clearance holes of the brackets or twin slot tracks are big enough for the selected anchor. The fischer DUOPOWER or the fischer frame fixing SXR can be used in concrete or solid brick for shelves weighing up to 25 kilogrammes and up to 50 kilogrammes. The right anchor for installing shelves always depends on the respective parameters. Now all that is missing is the right screw. The screw’s diameter depends on the diameter of the anchor. As a general rule, the screw is one to two sizes smaller than the anchor. Wood screws should be chosen over chipboard screws for maximum load-bearing capacity. The longer and larger the screw is, the more screw-in resistance they can have in solid construction materials. In this case, a new and unused drill should be used, if possible. The shape of the screw’s head should also be taken into account. Protruding screw heads can cause problems later on when inserting the shelf supports, especially when it comes to twin slot shelving systems.
The right screw length can be determined by calculating the thickness of the fixture plus the length of the anchor plus the diameter of the screw. More information on choosing the right screw can often be found on the anchor packaging or in manufacturers’ technical data sheets. Further advice on mounting shelves and much more can be provided by experts such as the fischer Application Engineers. The fischer plug-finder app also gives users a step-by-step guide to finding the right product by asking for a few details.
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