Alcove Shelving Cost?

[MiniMan64]

Little help and advice on costing much appreciated please chaps, this place always seems to know an answer!

We're looking to get some alcove shelving put into our second sitting room/playroom/general dumping ground. Nothing too fancy, 3-4 on one side, 4 or 5 on ther other, no recessed lighting or anything, only needs to hold books and CDs, about 15-20cm deep and we would like some without the brackets visible if that makes sense? They're going here:




(excuse the crap!)

Here's the thing, I've built something similar myself before, they were okay if not stunning but since there's a few more to do here we thought we'd get a professional in...

First quote £1600! I nearly fell off my chair!

The question is, is that a reasonable quote and I'm being the unreasonable tight one?

Or is that a tradesmen who doesn't want the job?

Or is that lunacy?

Must be a fairly common job, what have others paid for the same job?

[xstian]

Do you have a Google pic of the kinda thing you want. Lots of different ways you could put shelves in there. Did they give you any idea of how long it will take them.

[xeon]

I can't help too much with the costs given I've not had any quotes before, but that seems quite expensive to me.

I built something akin to the below myself in a couple of days for the cost of the materials (£200). I can give you more details + photos of the actual shelving units if you are interested in doing something similar. If you have the time to invest, you can get good results.



If you are just looking for shelves without the cabinet and want that 'floating' look, you could just screw some (around 20mm x 20mm) timber frame across each of the three sides, then glue / screw / slide some MDF on top, front and bottom. It will look like a solid floating shelf with no brackets, but it is hollow. That would be a fairly easy job if you have a saw and a drill. Get B&Q to cut the MDF down to size for you for straight cutting.

I realised that the above might not make sense so I found this picture of what I'm talking about:

[MiniMan64]

The second picture is what we're after I think?

We're not fussed about cupboards or surrounds, just simple shelves similar to this I think:

[PRTVR]

how about Ikea floating shelves.
http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/categories/depar...

[MiniMan64]

PRTVR said:

how about Ikea floating shelves.
http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/categories/depar...

Your link goes to IKEA fabric? I think I know the ones you mean, we've got them in our kitchen! Unfortunately the alcoves are odd (and different) widths so custom is probably the best option.

I really do like the idea of trying to DIY once the school holidays come around but I'm less keen on the idea of tsunami of grief if get if i cocked it up!

[essayer]

Buy the IKEA shelves, throw them away and use the wall mountings with your own custom sized shelves?

[037]

A good value way of doing this is to build the shelves in timber then plaster the shelves.

[Matt_N]

MiniMan64 said:

Your link goes to IKEA fabric? I think I know the ones you mean, we've got them in our kitchen! Unfortunately the alcoves are odd (and different) widths so custom is probably the best option.

I really do like the idea of trying to DIY once the school holidays come around but I'm less keen on the idea of tsunami of grief if get if i cocked it up!

I've got a similar issue but my alcoves are slighlty different widths and have a narrower rear than front (oo er).

I tried to custom fit some spare Ikea ones I had, they are easily trimmable, but they leave a messy finish on the exposed ends due to them being filled with corrugated cardboard between the sandwich top and bottom layers.

I couldn't get a decent fit due to my issues so the alcoves are still bare!

[RobinOakapple]

MiniMan64 said:

First quote £1600! I nearly fell off my chair!

The question is, is that a reasonable quote and I'm being the unreasonable tight one?

There are so many ways of doing that job that without a much clearer idea of what the tradesman is going to do, with what materials and finished to what standard that your question is impossible to answer. Also needed would be a description of site access, parking etc and how easy or difficult it would be to set up the necessary equipment to trim the shelves etc to an exact fit in the alcoves.

[paulrockliffe]

If you look in my build thread you'll see a detailed instruction on how to do this. Although I used ash fronts and oak-faced MDF for the tops and bottoms, you could do it in MDF exactly the same way. The only thing with swapping a solid wood front to MDF (mine is roughly 2" x 2") is that the stiffness of shelf comes from the stiffness of the front and MDF isn't stiff. I would definitely use a softwood for the front.

I spend something like £3-400 on materials for my 9 shelves and I'd expect a quote of at least £2k to get someone in to do them. I would say there's £60-80 of materials if you used MDF and softwood, 2 sheets of MDF for top and bottom of the shelves, then a load of 2" x 1" battons for the framing, and some lengths of softwood for the fronts.

It's pretty easy to DIY, but quite time consuming if you're scribing all your panels to the wall. That said, you can't see your mistakes very easily, so you don't need to scribe all that well. Especially at the back.

It's basically the same job doing it in MDF so I'd think your quote isn't a million miles off what I'd expect, but others will likely know better than me as I don't get men in as a rule.