fastening Cabinets to Block Wall

[vankaye]

Hello, I am ready to start building cabinets for my garage project now that the paint is done. I am planning to build my own cabinets because I really want to keep everything off the floor. "Floating cabinets" if you will. Cabs will be finished in furniture grade maple plywood, stained black, Urathaned with each door trimmed in aluminum.

I'm going for the $25,000 look on a $2500 budget.

That said, everything will need to be mounted to the walls. I would really prefer to have a space at the top of the cabinets all around the garage for indirect lighting. So I will not be catching any rafters and nothing touching the floor....

I understand the screen-tube and epoxy method might be my best bet as far as holding weight. And, I have to consider that I will be hitting the block in both hollow and solid points in random places. I don't feel like tapcons or lags will do the job.

Anybody have a good source on the epoxy screen tubes? The ones I have found seem to be outrageously priced!?!? $35 to 25 screens? Really? That doesn't even include the epoxy or the hardware.... crazy!

 

[pattenp]

How about french cleat boards mounted with toggle bolts to hang the cabinets?

 

[Architorture]

Agreed. Mount a French cleat so you can choose your best mounting points. Then just hang the cabinets off of that.

For wall cabinets it will easily hold the weight. For base cabinets just make sure you have a heavy frame member running across the top back of the cabinet. The sides will then act a brackets to transfer weight to the walls.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

Another vote for french cleats.

Richard

 

[Voi]

I always called them beveled cleats before the internet came along, but yeah, another vote for French Cleat.

If your block wall is uneven make sure to shim the cleat at the low spots to make up some of the difference. It doesn't need to be perfect but if you'll have heavy loaded drawers for your lowers you'll appreciate having the cleat flat.

I typically use fender washers to shim my beveled cleats.

In one spot of my garage I even used a thicker cleat and store stuff in the gap behind the cabinets. My telescopic hiking sticks, a partial roll of butcher paper, etc.

There are plenty of articles and forum discussions on this. Here are some Google results:

https://www.google.com/#q=block+wall+cabinets+french+cleat

 

[59'trump]

Agreed. French cleats are very nice. If you plan the cabinets as somewhat of a modular system you can easily move them around if need be in the future too. Dont underestimate tapcons and spax style masonry screws. They do their job well if predrilled and installed correctly.

 

[May Pop]

French cleat glued and tapconned to clean block. Or hollow wall anchors,lead anchor or Ackerman Johnsons all the same thing. They come in 1/4 and 3/8.

 

[3v0]

When I seen this post I was going to suggest french cleats but I seen that has already been done. They are great I even have them on my bolt bins.

 

[cburnscrx]

I have nothing to contribute, everybody else gave the right answer.

 

[rslaback]

French cleats will definitely do the job. I have used them myself but for a permanent mount I have never been a fan of the gap left behind the cabinet. If the cabinet only has a 1/4" back I am always afraid that I will perforate the back (or pop the cabinet joint) when I shove in that last gallon of paint etc.

I do a lot of maintenance work at my school in the summers and we obviously hang a lot of weight on block and concrete walls. For anything that has to hold a lot of weight we used 1/4-20 lead expanding anchors. Set correctly these babies are amazing.

That said, I think Tapcons would be fine for you.

 

[rdsk8ter]

My grandpa had a similar issue and he mounted 2x6s to the wall to match the cabinet layout and one down the middle of each cabinet. He anchored these cabinets to the 2x6s and then painted the visible parts to match the cabinets. held really well