After seeing a post on Apartment Therapy (Casie is still giggling about that one), Michele wrote to ask some more specifics about the construction of the wall and how the paneling works with the shelf standards. Here goes:
When installing the wall, we created a flush surface by blocking out the wall (we ended up going all the way to the floor and ceiling in the end). We could have simply put a layer of plywood over the studs, but believe it or not, we couldn’t afford the extra 3/4in depth as we didn’t want the desk to hang out past the sliding door frame to it’s left. In most cases, 3/4in plywood could be mounted directly to the studs rather than inset — I’d be afraid 1/2in plywood would not be thick enough to prevent screw pull-out on the standards once weighted with shelves, books, etc.
Anyway, after creating a solid/sturdy mounting surface (which we needed as the shelf standards would not be mounted directly to studs because of spacing — and after 40 years the studs are not square anyway), we cut 21in strips of 3/8in sheetrock (avoiding the beveled side) and 1/4in paneling — the 21in measurement came from the length of the wall divided by the number of standards (we wanted even spacing along the wall).
The Rakks brackets have a 5/8in backspacing (for 5/8in drywall), so the doubled-up drywall and paneling was the perfect thickness (see image below). The brackets also have about 1/8in slop on either side, too… just in case. After some (very) careful measurements, we secured the drywall to the plywood blocking with screws as you normally would.
We inlaid the paneling on top of the drywall with only a few brad nails at the very top to allow for expansion then simply laid the shelf standards over the pre-measured gap and screwed them to the blocking that was revealed by the gap we allowed. The flanges of the standards holds the paneling to the drywall (you could also use a few dabs of construction adhesive to bond the paneling to the drywall — but for us, shifting is not a problem as the panels go floor to ceiling and wall to wall, so they’re tight).
All in all, a very easy project effort-wise, but a bit of a brain-twister to plan out. It was a bit tough to cut 10-foot stock (the height of the wall) — for which i had to make a cutting jig/template to floor-cut the straight cuts with my skillsaw (as I didn’t trust feeding such a long piece through the table-saw)… a true panel-saw would have been nice here. Hopefully these go-bys help folks. If you have more questions, please feel free to email.
jayne from NYC asked about the stability of the desk and a few other specifics:
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hi jayne: the spacing was derived from the length of the wall and the number of standards/shelves we wanted across. we have three 2-standard wide shelf boards across the face… each being 42ish in long with a center support for each (3 brakets hit each shelf — on the ends and center). since we wanted an odd number of shelves (so you can sit in the middle of the desk while not on a seam), this made the most spatial sense for us.
as for stability, we’ve only had it up for a few weeks and are careful about what we put on it and it’s overall expectations, but so far, so good — definitely no wobble or bounce, but i’d be more worried about “tilt” as it ages and sags. we have a lamp, printer and laptop on there for load… unsure how a heavy monitor would do. also, since the shelf is not as deep as many/most desks, the weight at the edge (remember the leverage principles from physics) is not as great — a 24in desk with the same size brackets would produce a greater load should you put your elbows on the edge.
for the smaller shelves, rakks does have heavy-duty brackets which are simply taller to distribute the load. one thing about the system… although the brackets are infinitely adjustable, they do leave a bit of a nick on the inside of the track which is visible, so i’d suggest planning well (with a level) and setting the brackets once.
one thing i did do — which was a trick from ikea was to “pin” each of the shelves together where they abut. i clipped the head and point from a 4D nail (about the diameter of a metal coat hander rod), drilled into the side/face of one of the planks, aligned the shelves and marked the adjacent hole, then drilled the opposite hole. this would be similar to “doweling” things together, but instead with thin metal pins. similar to what’s going on here (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/en/9/98/Dowel_joint.png) except side-to-side… this dramatically helps keep the shelves in line across the face.
hope this helps.