How long do I let the liquid nails dry?

Everything I read says 1–2 days but this contractor who uses it on all his installs offers this awsome tip which should speed things up for you….

“The proper way to apply wood to wood without real nails and using Liquid Nails is the following. Put your bead on the 2 pieces of wood to be joined. put them together, squeeze and rub them together if possible. Now most important….pull them back apart and wait one minute. This gives the Liquid Nail a chance to activate a chemical reaction which makes it very sticky and will cure faster. Now put the wood pieces together and you will find they stick so well that you can not pull them back apart.”

I have to ask, Val… are you doubling up the boards? Laminate isn’t exactly meant for load-bearing.

If you’re using liquid nails to hold together the tongue-and-groove bit, you can just use painter’s tape to hold the stuff in place. No need to clamp.

Well, these aren’t exactly load bearing shelves, either @Seek. Just odds and ends that don’t seem to have a home in any other cabinets in the kitchen.

Good suggestion about the tape!!!!!!!!!!!! <Just had to! I tried using rubber bands a bit ago for a different part of the process, but they didn’t work well. I was trying to attach a bit of molding on the front of my first board using rubber bands. However, the molding is rounded on the front, facing end plus there is a little excess below the bottom with no support, rubber bands just pulled it down and apart.

@Cruiser so is he saying no clamping is even necessary?

Read Jimmy Cabinets post here…. http://www.contractortalk.com/f11/what-set-time-liquid-nails-87394/

I am going to give you this professional tip for free, because in spite of what you may think, I am still fond of you, heckling and all (no, I did not stutter). I would not use the flooring without a backing, at least use Masonite. Flooring is very good at handling surface compaction but crap for any type of flex. That is why when we lay a floor we make sure there is NOTHING under the floor. Since you had to be laying a floor, even run across a nail that was not removed, or a pebble you missed? If you even got the floor together something was at risk for getting marred. I would affix the flooring to the backing with a good quality professional grade spray adhesive, Loctite, 3M, or such, with the highest stick rating. Then once you spray both sides and let them cure for about 2 minutes, press them together, place some weight like books on top of the flooring, forget about it for 4–6 hours and when you come back, they should work fine holding décor.

I don’t understand…what would the backing do?

Alrighty then, @Cruiser! I’m put up for the day, but I’ll get back on it tomorrow. Thanks so much.

^ I don’t understand…what would the backing do?
Just about every laminate flooring I ever worked with fit together by some sort of snap together or tongue and groove method. That is one week point, if any section of these shelves spanned longer than a single detached board of flooring, without a backing it could snap or crack at that point; the backing would support it similar to when people would construct their jig saw puzzles on a sheet of cardboard or glue them to it once done. If you just glued the puzzle pieces together they may have hold top to bottom and side to side, but depth wise it would bow, flex, and eventually the piece(s) would fail ruining the puzzle. Even single pieces of flooring, depending on how long, flex and crack easy without that much weight, no one would notice when the floor is laid because the subfloor and the floor liner supports every inch of floor so none can flex or bow (unless you forget to get everything up off the subfloor before you but the boards down.) The backing helps hold the pieces together and support them against flexing and bending.

The shelves are 15.5 inches wide. Each piece flooring is supported fully on either end, width wise, so there are no seams that have any weight to hold all alone. All the tongue and groove does is make it look nicer where they join. Plus I can’t imagine what I could possibly put on them that they couldn’t hold. Maybe a sewing machine or something could cause it to bow over time. But nothing that heavy is going in there.

Does that address what you’re trying to tell me?

I say this because I love you and I know you…

when the twins try to climb those shelves, they WILL BOW. And we will have another comical Accident at Val’s Story.

LOL! Well, if they climb the shelves I guess they’ll learn not to climb shelves! I’ll take pictures if they do though. ;)

@Dutchess_III @Dutchess_III The shelves are 15.5 inches wide. Each piece flooring is supported fully on either end, width wise, so there are no seams that have any weight to hold all alone.
You may not have any issue wall to lip, but how long or wide are they from end to end?

Plus I can’t imagine what I could possibly put on them that they couldn’t hold.
It is not real wood, so when you think of what real wood could handle as far as weight, you cannot assume just because they call it laminated wood flooring, it will be as tough. Think of a cracker, if you mashed it end, it may not crumble, especially in the sleeve with other crackers helping each other. Then think if that single cracker you want to snap across the middle, you can do that much easier.

Hippy, they’re 15.5 inches long, end to end, and supported on either end. They’re 7¾ wide, so I have a little over 3 of them in per shelf, running from the back to the front.

Yeah, I’ve been looking and I’ve been thinking and now I’m all bummed out. In my mind I can see them start to bow just from gravity alone.
But it’s not the end of the world. I do need to put another layer on, as @Seek suggests, running the opposite direction. I just don’t think I have enough left over flooring to do it. One of the things I was proudest of is that I was able to do almost all of it without spending any money. Every thing I used, except for paint and mud, was made from stuff we had stashed. I know @Seek appreciates that!

And I’m getting impatient. This started out, like 3 or 4 months ago with the thought that “I’ll just throw some shelves in that closet!” Then, when I pulled everything out I realized my husband had not finished it out when he built it 8 years ago. There were sections where I had to piece in drywall AND had to fashion something to attache it to. None of it was mudded, and only partially painted. The exterior corners hadn’t been reinforced so I had to learn how to work with corner beading.
So all in all, it’s been a good learning experience but I keep collecting things to put on it, thinking I’ll be done soon, and they’re scattered all over my kitchen. I haven’t seen my kitchen since it began, and that disarray is like a virus, hitting all the rooms in the house.

Well, deep breath. Go back to square 6. Better do do it right.

Thank you guys, so much. And hey….if the shelves do start to fail either:
A) We will have moved or
B) I’ll just go buy some proper shelving shit and replace them.

Well, there is a God! We had one more full box of flooring!
AND it turns out that the width of two full boards is within 1/16th inch of 15.5 (it’s not perfectly square.) All I have to do is chop them down to 25” to get my depth. Piece of cake. (Until that light I see at the end of the tunnel turns out to be another train….)

Yay! A few dabs of the liquid nails should be more than sufficient to hold them together.

:D. But Jebus. I’m on my last shelf at the bottom and it’s about 1/16 difference in the front width from the top to the bottom.
But, as I said, there is a God. If I just shave off the tongue part of one side of the board it then fits perfectly. Sure beats trying to cut a sliver off of the board itself.

Wait…no. If there was a God I could go to bed and he’d do it all for me while I was sleeping.

@Dutchess_III Well, there is a God!
there always was, flooring notewithstanding, and hallelujah for naming the right God

I was glad i was here to witness that, hell i can quit knowing something magical happened here. :-D :-D