Mounting mirrored bathroom cabinet to plasterboard wall without usable stud

bathroom-fixturesmounting

I have a bathroom cabinet which weighs in at 14.5kg (empty).

The cabinet says that the screws should be "into material, not plaster board".

The problem is that the horizontal spacing between the screw holes in the cabinet is around 55cm, which is never going to match the space between the two uprights in a plasterboard wall.

I have considered using things like this which would easily take the weight (as they are rated for 100+kgs, and there will be four of them). Will I get away with this, or is there some bigger reason I'm missing why the cabinet says "not into plaster board"?

I have looked on all the information I can find on their website, and tried their Q&A, but no luck so far.

UPDATE: I have heard back from the company which makes the cabinet, and they usefully say (paraphrased) "We say don't mount on plasterboard because it's weak. But it'll probably be fine, all our publicity photographs are done on plasterboard".

Best Answer

The manufacturer's instructions probably just want to warn you against using plain screws in plasterboard, which isn't strong at all.

I have not seen or used the anchor linked in the question, but have used similar hardware to wall mount much heavier things to drywall. Even adding weight for the contents of the cabinet, a single anchor will carry considerably more. With four anchors, you're only using a fraction of the rated capacity.

Since there's an electrical connection involved, to be extra safe, I'd locate the studs - there should be a stud somewhere behind the cabinet - and drill a couple new holes in the back of the cabinet to attach to the stud with screws. It's really not important that the stud is not centered on the cabinet.