Natural wood shelf project, not flush against wall?

March 16, 2025 3:43 PM

Mrs. HeroZero got some lovely natural/driftwood cutting boards on deep discount at Home Goods. Her idea is to turn them into shelves for small knick-knacky things (i.e. nothing heavy) by putting brackets on the bottom. However, the side edges of the cutting boards are not straight but "natural". Will the brackets alone be enough to hold up the shelves, or does the self edge itself being flush with the wall provide stability?

To be clear here: Mrs. HeroZero is the handy one in our relationship. I am posting this to assuage my nerves.

posted by HeroZero to Home & Garden (6 answers total)

The strength of the wall and the brackets themselves are the most important. Shelf edges are not generally attached to a wall - the edge touching a wall doesn't help hold any weight. Most brackets have screw holes or a lip to hold the shelf in place and prevent it from sliding around or rotating atop the brackets. In other words, as long as the brackets are appropriately sized and installed on a strong enough wall, this will be fine.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 3:53 PM on March 16

Agreed. I have multiple shelves in my home which are attached to the wall with brackets and which don't touch the wall at all -- because of the design of the brackets, there's a sizeable gap between shelf and wall. They're very solidly attached.
posted by confluency at 4:11 PM on March 16

No, unless the shelf was actually fastened to the wall somehow, there is no need for it to be touching the wall at any point. I would probably prefer to cut a straight edge along the back just for the sake of neatness, but it wouldn't have any structural effect.

Actually, I would probably use floating shelf brackets as well, to make the shelves super-tidy. These are great where there won't be much weight on the shelf.
posted by dg at 4:35 PM on March 16

Thanks all. I'm marking this as resolved and chalking this up to my neurosis.
posted by HeroZero at 5:42 PM on March 16

Side-remark: It's usually better to be sure, so don't actually beat yourself up any.

...the world could use more people pausing to sanity-check before proceeding.
posted by aramaic at 6:00 PM on March 16

And in turn the world could also use more husbands believing their wives when they say they know what they're doing.
posted by cooker girl at 7:25 PM on March 16