A customer had a need to add a small upper cabinet in their half-bath downstairs, and they had an heirloom box that they wanted to use for it. The problem was that the box bottom was too thin to support any sort of fasteners going into the wall and holding it up.
I was able to put a ½” wide set of trim around the back corners and use that to conceal a “French cleat” to hold the box up. A French cleat consists of two parts
- An angled strip that gets screwed into the wall (in this case, a ½” x 15” strip)
- An mating angled strip on the back of the cabinet
Once the first one is attached to the wall, the box is just lowered onto the mating strip, and that serves to hold the box up. You will often see some cabinetry use this same feature. It also makes it easy to remove the cabinet if needed (just lift it off the cleat).
Kevin