Hanging with Mag Ruffman

Excerpted from How Hard Can it Be by Mag Ruffman. Copyright 2003 by Mag Ruffman. Excerpted, with permission by McClelland & Stewart Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Mounting know-how
Remember in the cartoons when someone would crash into a wall and a big chunk of plaster would fall out, revealing horizontal stripes of wood? (Trivia: Those horizontal boards under the plaster are called lath.) Then later in the same cartoon, a character would be so scared that he'd smash right through the wall, leaving the exact outline of his silhouette behind, but they never showed the lath around the edges of the silhouette hole where it should have been. This drove me crazy, and I'm still not over it.

Now, let's say you need to hang a picture or mount a cabinet. Your hanging options will be determined by the composition of your walls. Your house may have sheetrock (drywall) or lath and plaster walls, depending on its age. A house that's under forty usually has sheetrock walls, but how do you know for sure? Try inserting a thumbtack into the wall. If it sinks in easily, you've got drywall. If the thumbtack absolutely won't puncture the surface, your walls are plaster.

Mounting Enthusiasm
Hanging lightweight items on drywall is dead easy. Use a picture hook and hammer the nail through the angled channel so the density of the drywall supports it.

To hang something that's a bit heavier (up to ten pounds), install anchors. Most anchors are plastic and shaped like little projectiles with segmented nosecones that spring apart behind the wall once you drive a screw into them. Here's how to install one:
1. Drill a pilot hole to match the diameter of the anchor. To get a perfect-sized pilot hole, remove a drill bit from your drill index and drop the anchor into the index hole. If the hole doesn't fit, take out a different drill bit and test the anchor again until you find a hole that takes three-quarters of the length of the anchor, leaving the remaining quarter sticking up. Use the winning drill bit to bore your pilot hole.
2. Tap the anchor into place with a hammer.
3. Pre-drill a hole through the object you're hanging, then drive a screw through the object and directly into the wall anchor.

These plastic anchors work okay and you'll find them packaged with most brackets or shelf units you buy. Technically, they're meant for masonry and concrete, not drywall, but they work. If you want the very best, throw out the tubular plastic anchors and buy the Buildex E-Z Ancor brand; they look like big plastic screws. They grip a lot better than the little tube-shaped anchors, and will never pull out of the wall, plus they hold up to seventy pounds per anchor. Hanging a really hefty item like a cabinet, shelf unit, or coat rack takes more diligence. You have to find at least one stud to screw into. (They never showed the studs in the cartoons either. Talk about exasperating.)