Semi-O.T. Floating Stereo Shelf

[tomzarbo]

Our big rear-projection TV we got right after getting married 15 years ago finally became a victim of super-low Black Friday sales prices on large, flat-panel TV's. Several years ago the audio went out on it, but since it still had a good picture, we got a cheap HDMI audio extractor, and made do. This TV actually used to have excellent audio, you could listen to music on it and enjoy it... man, those were the days.

Anyway, the wife (that's right, the GIRL wanted a big TV, not the guy) finally caved and told me to order up an even larger flat panel set and it's on the wall currently. But that meant that the stereo components -- which I still want in this basic location -- have no TV stand to sit on. I considered a nice looking single component width rack, but after talking it over, decided on a floating shelf, me and the boss both like the look of these, so now on to how to make it happen.



Searching Amazon, I found these heavy duty brackets that come in various lengths. They really have this thing dialed in.



The 3/16" back plate has tapered holes every 1/2" so you can get the center of the stud perfect every time. The tubes are 1/8" thick steel and very sturdy. They say it will hold 50 lbs. per stud. I should be good for 100 lbs. then since I'll have it anchored in the same two studs the TV mount hangs from. using two (upper and lower) screws should really keep it from sagging.





So under construction is a hollow shelf 36" wide, 14" deep and about 2 1/4" thick which will be veneered with something to match our fireplace mantle. I'm not done the inside 'structure' yet, kind of figuring it out as I go. I plan on doing the glue up with the bracket in place to make sure things are lined up, there's no tweaking that bracket I don't think.

Anyway, I'll post pics when it's finished at least, but I just wanted to share a decent bracket idea for anyone looking now or in the future for something similar. They were called "Shepherd Brackets" BTW.

TomZ

[jhollander]

Tom a tip that helped me was to make sure the bracket was mounted directly to the studs or block of wood then studs that would not be crushed when pushing down on the bracket.

[Millstonemike]

Consider wiring in you plan (it's always a nightmare). Did you catch Paul Carmody's post on the nifty wiring organizer. For ideas ...

[Blenton]

Looks like fun. The guy that designed and sells those brackets is a friend of mine; the brackets are machined just down the road from me. I usually fabricate my own floating shelf brackets (most are for custom sizing/mounting, etc), but, IMO, those are pretty much the best production brackets you can get. The weight capacity depends on the the depth of the shelf and has more to do with deflection than having a shelf fall of the wall, but they are certainly stout and minimize deflection compared to most any other production bracket I've used.

[Steve Lee]

TomZ - I'm gonna just throw this thought out there for consideration:

Make your shelf into a center channel speaker enclosure.

Now think about that for a bit.

Later, Sir!

[tomzarbo]

You know, when Paul posted that wire-hidey thing I almost commented about how good of an idea I thought it was. I had already planed on building a little 'under-shelf' to hold the power strip I use, as well has to have a place to 'shove' the wires that I don't want laying around. The main shelf will be around 16-18" or so off the floor, so that little extra compartment should not be too visible. It will be just a simple box with fold-down access so I can access the 'juicy' bits. Yes, it would be a nasty looking mess without any way to deal with the wires.

As far as the center speaker idea, I had not considered that. We have a 'movie' room with the full 5.1 surround setup in the living room, so I'll just keep this simple, but thanks for the suggestion, It would be fairly easy to go with a quad of ND-65's and a tiny 5/8" tweeter for a horizontal MMTMM, or something similar and have a pretty decent little center setup that would keep up with the Bantams.

The other TV we had no audio, so we HAD to use the stereo each time when watching TV.... This new TV actually has good audio and vocal clarity for normal TV watching, so we won't be using the stereo with this all the time, only when we either want to crank up a movie, or watch some YouTube videos or something.

The bracket is only 1 1/4" wide, so there is a lot of leverage available to try and compress the drywall in places. I have that 1/4" or 3/8" thick wainscotting on the wall, which should keep the wallboard from 'crushing' under the 'torquing' forces of bolting this thing down. My receiver is under 20 lbs. and most of the weight is toward the rear where the transformer is located, so that's good. I plan on only having my receiver, CD player, small blueray player, and the tiny cable box thingy, not a lot of weight really. I'm trying to make the shelf itself on the lighter side, so I'm using 1/2" plywood to keep it on the lighter side.

I have a welder and I do enjoy using it to make stuff from time to time. I was thinking that I could possibly make my own or do it in hardwood and just have smaller braces underneath that wouldn't be seen since it sits so low on the wall anyway, but then I saw this one and it looked excellently engineered and had great reviews. It just seemed too easy to not use it. I'm still making the shelf, so I'm still DIY'ing it a little bit.

Thanks for the ideas guys.

TomZ

[Blenton]

I may have worded my previous post poorly; just meant to give you a thumbs up on using those brackets. Like I said, I’m friends with the guy that designed and builds those brackets and my experience with them shows me they are a top notch product that should work very well for you. Didn’t mean to sound like I was razzing you for not dragging the welder and grinder out to fab up a few brackets

[tomzarbo]

Getting close to putting some veneer on this thing. Probably going with a non-grainy looking poplar or similar... just want it brownish and woody looking.



I was trying to get all precise with the holes and it was just for naught. There needs to be a little play in them or it will never go in once it's screwed to the wall.





I made a little "Under-shelf" to catch the power strip and the excess wires and such. It will fold up and screw in with a few screws so I can (fairly) easily make changes, plug/unplug stuff, etc.



Gluing a layer of 1/8" HDF to the sides, and later to the front and top to hide any joints from showing. That is el-cheapy 1/2" plywood and who knows what the end grain of that stuff will look like under a decent veneer.

The front panel that will hide everything isn't in the picture, but it hinges on the bottom board in the above pic, and will rest against the two angle-y pieces of wood to hide what I need hided.

As usual, I'm taking a perfectly simple project and complicating it to bits. You only live once though, might as well have your cables all tidy, right?

TomZ

[tomzarbo]

Few more pics and an idea of how the wire-hiding shelf will work...

[1100xxben]

Tom,

I may be looking at this incorrectly, but it looks to me like you're going to have a gap between your shelf and the wall that is the thickness of the bracket plate. Have you thought about making your top/bottom/sides extend a little further so they go all the way to the wall? Another option would be to route a recess in the back piece of your shelf. Again, maybe I'm misunderstanding, or maybe you want the slight gap to be there. I like the idea of the floating shelf though and might have to try that out sometime.

-Ben

[tomzarbo]

Tom,

I may be looking at this incorrectly, but it looks to me like you're going to have a gap between your shelf and the wall that is the thickness of the bracket plate.

-Ben

It would have, but like you surmised, the 1/8" hardboard I'm applying to the sides and top will extend a bit and will hide the bracket and should place the shelf flush against the wall.
Good eyes man!

It's kind of cool how light, yet strong the shelf is. Going hollow is more work, but it will be able to easily hold up the weight of even one of those vintage Sansui amps if I want in the future.

The little triangle brackets may take a bit of the twist as well.

TomZ

[Millstonemike]

Maybe too late to the party ...

Threaded bolts at the red markers might be able to adjust for any deflection assuming there's enough wiggle room ..

[tomzarbo]

It wasn't up/down I had to account for, it was side to side.

If the holes were not 100% perfect where the tubes enter the shelf, the tubes would bow out or in when you try and slide it in, making hitting the inner ones impossible. Once I widened them a scootch, the inside ones could be made to line up no problem. The up/down snugness still seems good.

I'll know for sure when I get it in and under weight I guess.



I like the cord routing I came up with, it should work pretty well, and be hidden by the components more or less. Half of a 3/4" hole.

TomZ

[Blenton]

That shelf is coming along nicely! Just a quick installer too for the bracket regarding keeping the shelf level front to back - walls, IME, are rarely ever perfectly plum so grab a pack of shims or something to shim with when you install the bracket itself. Sometimes something as simple as thin cardboard or paper folded a few times shoved under the bottom lip of the bracket (or top lip as the case may be) can level it out. Put your level on the round rods and shim appropriately. I usually aim for slightly tipped up so when the shelf is set in the rods and loaded, it settles in to level.

[tomzarbo]

Getting this wrapped up in a day or two.

Ben, you were right actually. Even though I did use 1/8" hardboard to clean up the edges on the shelf and extended it on the back to cover up the bracket, through multiple sandings, I removed just enough material so the shelf didn't set flush with the wall anymore when installed. I ended up chiseling some material out where the bracket sits. I made a deep 1/8" line with my multi-vibrating tool and then used my chisel to remove a bit more than 1/16" of material. Kind of fun actually, not so neat as it was in plywood, but I don't always get to do the hand-tool thing, so it was a bit of therapy for me. Now it's flush and neater looking. I should have addressed this better in the beginning but...



The bracket is secure... it really is on there good. It's a really sturdy setup. Things were snug trying to get the shelf to slide on the three pipes.
The wainscotting created a bit of a challenge... it is a bit wavy compared to the drywall underneath, though it's cut in 8 or 10" widths. That waviness made the back of the bracket want to not sit totally flush.



I was thinking I'd have to shim it up here or there, but I had already planned on putting a few drywall anchors in to keep the thing snug to the wall in between the two stud attachment points. That kept the bracket mostly flush to the wall except for a slight adjustment on the right side pipe. It needed the slightest tweak outward, now it's golden. If that didn't work, I was going with Blenton's suggestion.

Slides in easy enough, but has enough friction to keep it in place flush to the wall with no other means of fastening. I like this system, seems really strong.

From down low, you can see, or will be able to see the cord-hider setup under the shelf slightly, but I'll paint it white and it shouldn't stand out too much at least.

I like the look of a floating shelf, cleans things up nicely. We repainted out master bedroom this summer and when we were done, it looked so nice we added a few doo-dads here and there to spruce it up... and a set of three cheapy Home Depo floating shelves really make that part of the wall look a lit nicer. Those are hardly strong enough to hold up a few picture frames and trinkets, but they look nice and were easy to install. I would have made a set for that too, but I was tired from a week of painting.



The shelf is stained, have a few more coats of poly to apply, but it's looking good.



I'll probably make something to hide the cables from the TV to the shelf, and from the shelf down to the floor. I even have some in-wall speaker cable with a white outer sleeve that might blend in decently for this situation.

TomZ

[Blenton]

Nice!

[tomzarbo]

Pretty much done, still have to tidy up the cables a bit.



The under shelf compartment was just big enough to fit all the cables and power strip. Had to take out the HDMI audio extractor and place behind the CD player.

There may be a thin blue ray player coming, but I have to unhook it from our other TV and I'm not looking forward to doing that.

It was difficult to line up the wires in the back of the unit with the semicircle holes while pushing the shelf back... needed the wife for that.

I don't like the two hinges for some reason, I think it makes it look kind of too homemade. But other than that, I like it, and the wife does as well.

Now on to more important things... Speakers!

TomZ

[Steve Lee]

That turned out really well, Tom!

Concerning the hinges - flip them over and install them inside the cabinet (when you feel like it).

Best!

[djg]

Nice job, as usual.