What can I mount on my laminated wall?

What sorts of weights are you envisioning this shelf carrying? Obviously anchoring strategies for lightweight stuff are going to be quite different from those for heavy stuff.

For some towel bars in my motorhome (in this case attached to the interior walls, so no foam core on the inside), I made up some little backer plates of thin 1/8" (probably actually 5mm) plywood to go under the mounting feet. These backer plates I pre-drilled to fit the standard plastic wall anchors that came with the towel bars. I then glued the backer plates onto the wallpaper (mostly to hold them in place while assembling everything else), drilled through the holes in the backer plates through the luan wall surface, and ponded in the wall anchors and mounted the towel bars as usual.

My idea is that the backer plates do two things: they provide a thick enough skin for the anchors to properly grip, and they help to spread out the forces of the mounting feet to avoid possibly puncturing or ripping the wall paneling. So far (which isn't all that long, admittedly), they've held up just fine.

Maybe something like that would work for you. Using the plastic anchors rather than molly bolts or winged anchors will avoid damaging too much of the foam core.

Well,the set of shelves I built are about 18" wide and 48-ish tall, made out of clear pine. So I would say it's in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 pounds hanging on the wall. It has a backing of 1/4" in cabinet grade hardwood/plywood. So I guess the good news is, that the weight is spread over a pretty wide area that I can get a lot of anchors in. The other good news is, it's being tucked into a corner so there should be something there in the corner to anchor to. I saw a pretty cool nylon anchor that really spread wide grip behind the wall board when the screw is tightened down. I just worry a little about the hard foam when the anchor spreads. The other thing I could do is put a thin strip of PL-400 sub floor glue at the top and the bottom with some kind of anchor to hold it in place til the PL-400 firms up. Problem with that is, one is pretty much married to it once the PL-400 cures and you're not removing it from the wall with out a fight and I promise the trailer will lose in the fight.

V-465

Have you considered a jack nut?
click here for example

Spridle wrote:
Have you considered a jack nut?
click here for example

That's what I always use, found at any hardware store. At least it ain't gonna strip out.