About hanging pictures, life the universe and everything (well almost)

So you're thinking about putting some pictures up, perhaps a mirror, or something else hanging on the wall. You may be wondering - what is in the wall, electrics, plumbing, air, and how can I best fix my thing to the wall? well hopefully the following will help.

Placing your picture - If you are just hanging a picture on a plain wall, you'll pretty much have carte blanche to put it where you wish, no other features to fit in with.  The next question is how high - at eye level is a good bet.  If there are other features on the wall such as the top of a door frame or a window, it might look good to align your frame with the top of the door or the bottom of the window.

Other considerations - is the chosen site practical, would it get knocked by passing people, the fridge door, the loft ladder?

How to fix - now that depends on the wall, plasterboard is a thin layer of cardboard coated plaster, quite stable in normal use, you can drive a small nail into it for small pictures, but anything larger will need a proper fixing or two (except if you can find the supports which hold up the board - normally placed every 60cm) - here are some examples, the idea is to spread the weight on as much plasterboard as possible.  A single fixing might take about 35kg, so a safe working load (picture weight) would be about five kilos.  For heavier objects such as mirrors and old plasma TVs, it will be necessary to put several plugs into plasterboard. If your wall is brick or concrete, no worries with the fixings -  the wall is a lot stronger all over. 

Knowing the wall type and avoiding the worst

This was found inside a plasterboard wall - the screw went into the electrical conduit

What is the wall made of?  There are many materials which are used, outside walls -  the load bearing ones, will be made from something strong, in the old houses it was stone, then later concrete, and now typically multi-layer air brick or foam cement brick.  If there is insulation on the inside then that needs to be dealt with.  The internal walls will be made of something thinner such as plaster or ceramic brick, except of course if they are load bearing also.  Either way we need to ensure that we avoid the services such as water electricity etc. These services are typically installed when the house is built and if they are in the wall, they are normally buried deep. However they can be close to the surface so look for tell-tale signs - are you about to drill directly above or below an electrical or plumbing installation? Chances are that there is a conduit (pipe, cable...) nearby. So rule number 1, stay away from the services - the conduits typically run up or down from the outlet, normally to the nearest floor.  Rule number 2, only drill as deep as neccessary.  
Here are some typical screws and plugs - the upper ones for smaller loads, the top screw is about 4 by 40 and the second 4.5 by 50mm (it came from the box underneath.) On the plug it says SX6 so a 6mm hole is required, and the plug can be used with 4~5mm screws. I normally try to get 3cm of screw in the wall - that means going down to the bottom of the plug.

The larger screw at the bottom would go well with the 8mm plug just above it, a thicker screw would go better, say 6mm.

Choosing the right drill 

Here are some examples of drills for wood, metal, concrete and tile.  There is some interoperability for example the steel one will go into wood, but not vice-versa and the two tipped bits on the right will both go into soft tile (clay tile) but the one on the far right will go best into porceliain "Grés" tile because it is sharp - and e.g. using it in concrete will blunten it....

drill tips

Drill shanks

The third drill is the SDS - these are designed to fit more powerful hammer drills, the bit is allowed to slide in and out of the chuck a few mm during drilling. They are also quick to fit in the drill chuck. The SDS bit will go into a regular screw-down chuck, just check that it is straight before drilling. 

Choosing the right plug

a selection of fixings or wall plugs

Any of the plugs above could work in plasterboard, it really depends how much weight you wish to support - the three upper right will certainly work best - two are expanding plugs and the one in the middle which looks like a big screw is really easy to deploy and should be good for 35kg.  I have seen lightweight electric radiators fixed with four of these, ripped from the wall because someone sat on the radiator, so consider if there is ever likely to be any additional weight or stress.
The difficulty with concrete may be the drilling - an SDS equipped hammer drill is a must in this case, expect to pay the equivalent of EUR60 for a cheap one, the cordless SDS will be upwards of 300-.  I'm not saying that you can't do it with a cheap hammer drill with a screw down chuck, just that it will take all day to go through concrete...  There is one got-cha there - I do find that using a rotary non-hammer action is preferable when drilling into modern brick - the lack of a hammering action seems to create a cleaner hole, whereas when using a hammer it just blasts through.  I tend to begin the hole without the hammer action, if I see red brick dust, just keep going without the hammer, it takes a little longer and you'll have to press a little harder, but the extra effort will result in a nice clean hole.

Fixing

The head type in the photo is Pozidrive size 2, or PZ2, if you can read what it says on the screw box above (PZD2) you'll know what I'm talking about.  These screws are self centering (the screwdriver doesn't slip out like the old flat blade screws) and the screw won't fall away from the bit once you set it there, some bits have magnets as well

Ok so we at TEDS property have now probably hung thousands of pictures - what is the worst that can happen? Water? Electricity? well that hasn't happened yet, well once to an [ex] colleague, but he was screwing on a cover to a central heating water duct.  The other surprise can be super thin walls, we have them here in Geneva, they are just 2.5cm thick! not so useful when you want to put a screw in 3cm, to be sure that there is enough of it in the wall... So I admit that this has happened at least three times to me. I remember the first time - I said to the guy, "I just drilled all the way through your wall," he just looked at me and shrugged, searching for a solution, I said that I would fix it straight away "Cool" he said! and that was that. If it is your own home, and you're not quite sure about the thickness of the wall, consider this - if there is already a picture on the other side of the wall, take it off before drilling... If not, and you end up with a hole that goes all the way through, by using a longer screw, you can hang pictures on both sides of the wall? Alternatively call the experts.

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In a future blog I will cover drilling into tile.