Shop Cabinet Ideas?

[Rod Sheridan]

Hi Matt, the smartest thing I did was listen to my FIL who suggested that I put a French Cleat up in the shop to hang my cabinets from.

Brilliant, and if I want to move a cabinet or change it to a clamp rack, pick it up off the cleat and put the new one on.............Rod.

[Matt Meiser]

Yeah, I should have done that when I finished the inside of the shop. I even have trim around the shop at the 8' mark to hide the joint between the upper and lower OSB panels and that could have been a french cleat too. Now along that wall there's compressed air piping, dust collection piping, etc that would interfere with continuous runs from pole-pole. I could still do it at the 6' mark (horizontal "studs" are at 2' intervals) but not pole-pole.

[Phil Thien]

So all that would be supporting these cabinets would be a single horizontal 2x4 running 8' between poles, and the OSB sheathing?

[Matt Meiser]

And a 4x6 post at about the middle. Doesn't sound like enough.

[Michael W. Clark]

Matt,
Would you be able to run a cleat between three of the posts? The one post is in the middle of your run, can you run an 8 foot cleat from it to the two on the outside of your cabinet run? If so, you could attach it to the outer two 4x6s, the middle 4x6, and the 2x4 in the horizontal. The deeper you make the cleat (wider), the stronger it will be.

Mike

[Matt Meiser]

Not easily at all as the next pole one way has a partition wall butted against it.

[Michael W. Clark]

Not easily at all as the next pole one way has a partition wall butted against it.

Then a continuous cleat is not going to work. I suspect you will "probably" be OK going into the 2x4 and 4x6, but that is not neccessarily sound advice. If all of your cabinets are attached together solidly, and the middle one is attached securely to the center post, that will help. Can you put a ledger board under the bottom of the cabinets, preferrably wide enough to catch the next 2x4 below? Maybe make it look like a backsplash above your bench? Most of the load is vertical, not a momemt pulling the cabinets out from the wall. The ledger may also be helpful when installing the uppers.

Mike

[Matt Meiser]

I'll have to do some measuring. I'm probably not too far above the next one down--would be 4' off the floor. I think the receptacles might be just above that.

[Jim Laumann]

Matt

I've got a pole shed style shop, w/ the horizantal framing. Big pain in the backside, and a mistake when I framed it - but I listened to the contractor who built my shed, and that was his recommendation - I should have gone vertical .

That being said, when I went to hang some cabinets which we took out of the kitchen, what I did was to run 3/4" ply in to the spaces between the ribs in the steel panels (my shop has a steel interior). I attached the ply so it crossed multiple horizantal 2x4s, using 3 3" wood screws on each 2x4 crossed by the plywood. Then I went with a french cleat system for the top of the cabinet.

The cleat allowed me to hang the cabinets by my lonesome. Being paranoid, I went back and run some 1.5" wood screws thru the cabinet back into the cleat & plywood. I know that "defeats" the re-arrangeability factor of the cleat, but I didn't want the cabinets coming down.

I did something similar for attaching the base units to the wall.

Jim

[Darryl Konsmo]

Call me silly but, if your not putting doors on cabinet boxes, why not just build shelving. Less material and more shelves. Adjustable too!