Supporting a large floating corner desk

[John TenEyck]

Agreed. I built this display/desk area for a child. It's only 12" wide on the side wings, but the center desk area is 24" deep to the corner. Increasing the width of the side wings to 18" would get you a deep desk area of a wide width. Just an idea. This was built as one unit and scribed to the walls. It has a 3/4" thick back panel with a stretcher inside, up against the top. It's screwed to the studs using 3 or 4" cabinet screws. You can sit on it without issue. The torsion box type construction supports the unit over a wide area against the drywall so there's no concern of it being destroyed. The whole thing can be removed leaving no more damage to repair than a few screw holes. Drawers could easily be added where the cubbyholes are.



The shelves above are true torsion boxes that fit over a ledger screwed to the wall. They are made with 1/2" plywood bonder to 1-1/2" foam board. Light and rigid.



John

[Kevin Jenness]

My introduction to torsion boxes was a 1980's Fine Woodworking article by Ian Kirby, which led off with a picture of his burly self sitting on a shelf cantilevered from the wall supported by only a concealed ledger as in John's shelves shown above. Lightweight, strong and stiff.

My experience tells me that drywall is pretty strong in compression. You have to seriously overload it to make it crumble, otherwise there would be a lot of wall-hung cabinets tilting and sagging. If you want to hide your countertop brackets, cut and patch the sheetrock, but for normal loading surface mounted supports will serve.