Tuesday, October 16, 2007

In Search of Studs

I never knew it would be so difficult to hang pictures and medicine cabinets where you want them. Our house seems quite void of studs. We have a pretty ghetto stud finder that doesn't work well at all. We've also tried the tapping method, and seriously, each wall seems to have only one stud. Sometimes I wonder how the house is still standing. The standard distance is 16 inches between studs, but I think ours is 18-24 inches. That's quite the spacing if you want to hang a picture. Or cabinet. Or TV.

I eventually wanted to upgrade to a flat panel TV and hang it above our fireplace so we could make the most of the limited wall space in our living room. Right now it's pretty cramped with our piano and 20 in. TV. But in order to do that, I think we'd have to cut a huge square out of our drywall, add in reinforcement studs, patch the hole back up, and then hang the TV.

While the TV dream is not in the near future, pictures and cabinets I have a plenty right now. We bought some drywall picture hanger hooks, but we have yet to use them. It says it can hold up to 50 lbs., so I would imagine my medicine cabinet can be hung by those as well, but I'm a little nervous to test it out.

I guess good studs are hard to come by.

4 comments:

Lindsay said...

Now, I know next to nothing about the finer points of hanging things up on walls, but in our [very old] apartment, the walls are hollow and made of plaster. Our landlord told us that if we wanted to hang things up on the walls (which, of course, we did), we could use those plastic anchors for hollow walls. I wonder if they'd work for you in your studless walls? Anyway, good luck!

CACKEL said...

we used those drywall hanging hooks for our heavy egyptian paintings and mirror, and they worked SO WELL. they are all really heavy, so i guess they mean it when they say 50 pounds. good luck with the TV though.

Celia Marie (W.) B. said...

That's good to know cackel. I won't feel so worried now.

ASB said...

Always err on the side of overkill, I say, when hanging things. If it weighs two pounds, use a 100 pound hanger.

I only say this because my husband replaced an existing ceiling fan in our living room, where the builder fan was originally mounted.

Very shortly after, while on the high setting, the new fan actually fell from the ceiling while Danielle was reading not quite underneath!

It didn't injure or hit anyone, but screaming occurred, and it cracked/ripped the top of our multi-ply wooden/leather bombe coffee table. Since the table is still usable I am learning how to sew a custom table runner. :D

Anyway, don't fear overkill on such things. ;)