Safe, strong adhesive for foam and paint.

June 29, 2005 9:44 AM

Any suggestions on how to attach acoustic tiles to a regular plastered and painted wall — that will allow for easy removal of the tiles in the future?

My business partner and I moved offices, and he does sound work for commercials... so our small office was bedecked in those foam tiles that are all different angles. Anyway, when we pulled them off the wall, they took the paint and some plaster with them. I don't want that to happen when we move again, so I'm trying to find a better way of attaching them. Ideas?

posted by silusGROK to technology (5 comments total)

Mount them on a board and hang it on the wall. I've seen homemade boards with clips at each corner that drop into screws in the wall to mount accoustic foam in a fair number of studios - it enables you to easily run cabling between the a.f. and the wall too.
posted by benzo8 at 10:55 AM on June 29, 2005

That may work... but I don't know whether our landlord would allow for screws.
posted by silusGROK at 12:59 PM on June 29, 2005

Attach the tiles to sheets of gyproc, foamcore or even heavy corragated cardboard that has been installed up against the wall with moldings. I've done this with maps mounted on foam core. We only needed about 1 hole every couple of feet along the ceiling to attach the quarter round to. If you had furniture up against the wall you wouldn't even need that. Alternatively you could use some of that sticky tac stuff used to hang posters to keep the foam core in place.
posted by Mitheral at 1:43 PM on June 29, 2005

Only ways I can think of to support the tiled partitions without leaving a mark on the walls:

Poles supported by bases made from concrete filled buckets or planters.
Framing out the partitions with a triangular support on the backside.

Both of those are going to take up more space than hanging the sheets. Ask your landlord. If his bottom line is that when you leave it has to look the same as when you arrived, just hang the sheets or attach them with strips like Mitheral mentioned, and patch/sand/paint the few holes when you leave. It's going to be a lot easier than making supports. Using cardboard, luon, or masonite as a backing material for the tiles will be the easiest, using gypsum board will be messier and require more support, but will add a little bit to the sound absorbtion.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 2:06 PM on June 29, 2005

Ceiling tiles are pretty light - you could use this stuff. Or duct tape.
posted by sixpack at 2:16 PM on June 29, 2005