Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with hanging

How to hang heavy items from walls & concrete ceiling w/o holes?

mprove — Thu, 09 May 2013 11:30:23 -0800

I recently moved into a loft in a really nice building. One issue I'm up against is that I am not permitted to drill any holes in the walls or concrete ceiling. I have been using the 3M Command strips and hooks and they work well for small things. However, even the hooks rated for 3 lbs failed to hold my very light-weight surround speakers. I also have a display case for my shot glass collection that weighs 21 lbs before even adding the glasses to it. I am thinking that may just have to live as a resting, rather than hanging, display. But I would also like to hang a lightweight pendant style lamp over the area I've set up as my living room. The ceiling does have some concrete protrusions that extend down from it. Would some hardware like a C clamp be solid enough to hang something like that from? Other suggestions? And recommendations for hanging artwork besides the Command products?

Who asks who out after a raincheck?

earthquakeglue — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 17:38:50 -0800

If you mutually agree to raincheck who should ask who to do something next time? Last Tuesday i was supposed to hang out with my guy friend(he's 27 and i'm 25), but work made him stay over because they got in a huge shipment of shoes that night (833). So he got off work much later then he expected and he still wanted to hang out, but everything was already closed so we couldn't really do anything. He apologized and we mutually agreed to a raincheck.

I was told to wait and let him ask to do something again, but so far he hasn't.
Should i just ask him if he's free any next week? I don't want to be a nag.

How to best hang this piece of art?

2soxy4mypuppet — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:06:41 -0800

I have a large (but not terribly heavy) wooden shield that I'd like to hang. Yesterday I used two eye screws, wrapped wire around the handle, and tried to suspend it. Pic of the back of the shield here: http://tinypic.com/r/34ffwbk/7 Unfortunately there's no stud, it needs to hang in a very specific location, and the eye screws were too short. To be honest it was a little sub-par as a solution anyway. All the grip clamps (like you'd use to hang a broom) at the hardware store are either too big or too small. How would you mount this? With the handle on the back, the piece extends about four inches from the wall. I'm willing to trudge back out into the frozen wasteland and hit up the hardware store again, but not if I don't have to. Thank you!

Fantastic! Now ... how to hang it

notcomputersavvy06 — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 11:13:20 -0800

Calling all handymen and women, artists and other problem solvers; how to hang totally awesome (but heavy) acrylic painting my boyfriend made me for Christmas My completely great boyfriend recreated a style of artwork I'd been coveting by painting stripes onto acrylic panels. Now, the dilemma ... how to hang them. Typically, it is done by drilling holes in the four corners of the panels and attaching to the wall via a metal standoff. We're trying to brainstorm a different way that doesn't alter the front of the pictures. Here are the concerns/issues. The paint is applied directly to the back of the acrylic...there is no other backing, just the paint. We're concerned about using glues to adhere brackets (wooden or metal) to the back for fear that the glue will react (eat through) the paint, thereby altering the piece when viewed from the front. (Glue suggestions welcomed.) We've considered using Very High Bond tape to adhere brackets, but are concerned there is not enough surface area on the brackets to hold the weight of the panels. (VHB tape instructions suggest using 4 sq. in. of tape per pound of weight.) The smallest panel weighs 3 lbs and is 48 by 9 inches in size and the largest weighs 10 lbs and is 48 by 24 inches big. My walls are regular ol' drywall. Any suggestions given these parameters?

Hangups with Hang-ups

blue t-shirt — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 10:59:46 -0800

What's the proper way to accommodate a chair rail (dado rail) when hanging items on the wall? I have a framed map and several smaller mirrors that I'd like to hang in my living room. However, there's an oak chair rail/dado rail/strip of moulding midway up all four walls.

To my eye, the proper place to hang these objects is to center them between the ceiling and the chair rail. When I do this, though, they're almost comically high. I'm 6'4", yet when hung this way, I can barely see my reflection's forehead in the mirrors or read the text at the top of the map. I can imagine this stuff way up high on the walls might have an unsettling effect for guests of typical height, but if I try to hang them any lower, this sense of wrongness pervades - the margin between the hangings and the chair rail becomes too narrow compared to the margin above the hangings.

I suppose what I really want is a rule of thumb I could use to confirm that my super-high hangings are the best I can do, or convince me that it's totally unacceptable to have these things hung way up there. But a passel of related questions also come to mind:

Am I overthinking this? Is there some option I'm missing? Have any of you had any experiences with being discomfited by clumsily hung artifacts? Have you ever had a similar situation with an object you loved but had no room to hang where you wanted, and if so, what compromise did you decide? Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

A broken bolt and a heavy mirror

jmhodges — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 15:36:07 -0800

The bolt head in my heavy hanging mirror's back snapped off and I'm trying to fix it but the particleboard backing is being a jerk. So, the head snapped off one of the bolts holding the heavy hanging wire making it un-hangable. Trying to unscrew the bolt out of the backing has failed because it seems the bolt is connected to something behind the particleboard backing. It'll spin and wiggle freely but not come out.

The particleboard is stapled in place all around the mirror. I suppose I could take some pliers to the staples, but I don't have a heavy stapler to replace them.

There are trick to fixing this or am I going to have to find a professional or just give it up? (Where would one even take a mirror so barely broken?)

Frameless LP jacket wall hanging?

mediareport — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 09:29:24 -0800

I want to hang some LP covers on a wall, and remember years ago seeing a cheap little kit that was something like four pieces of clear plastic for the corners, connected by an elastic string X-shape in the back that could hang on a nail. The result was a neat frameless effect that I liked, but I can't find it again. Does anyone know what that kit was and where I can buy it? I've seen this thread but none of the options there are what I'm remembering. I don't want a record rail like this, where all the covers are on the same horizontal line; I'd like each one hung separately, but not have a frame. The default is to use inobtrusive nails and set the LPs on them, but I really like what I remember of those clear plastic corner things and am hoping they're still around.

Please help me hang three large format pieces of art so it is straight and evenly spaced.

funkiwan — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:16:15 -0800

Please help me hang three large format pieces of art so it is straight and evenly spaced. I've uploaded a few photos, front and back, to give a sense as to what I'm dealing with. I have three identically sized pieces of art that I'd like to hang next to each other, evenly spaced, with their tops (and bottoms) aligning. Each piece is 23" (width) x 49" (length). The art is mounted on 1/2" foam core, with several 4" square pieces of 1/2" foam core mounted at the top, middle and bottom.

The first photo reveals four different hanging strategies in this art's history. I'm not the original owner. Velcro directly on the back, velcro on the mounts, string between the mounts, and 3M Command Strips. The velcro worked decently but it leaves a sticky mess. I found getting the 3M Command Strips tabs lined up just so near impossible.

Because there's long, adjacent parallel lines, the precision in getting it just right in both horizontal and vertical directions may call for a more easily adjustable solution. Anyone have any ideas?

Which deaths cause angel lust?

Hactar — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:50:04 -0800

Which circumstances lead to an erection after death? The wikipedia article specifically talks only about hanging and other damage to the spinal cord. Is this the only way that "angel lust" occurs, or can it occur in other circumstances? Other articles that I can find online talk about gravity causing it, but the only methods of death specified are hanging, head trauma and certain poisons. (I was thinking of crucifixion specifically, although I was doubting it, given that the body dies of suffocation, which would indicate that blood would not suddenly pool in an area of the body after death. But now I'm curious and want to know.)

Drywall hanging in earthquake country

benzenedream — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 15:59:06 -0800

I'd like to hang a 15 lb framed painting on drywall in an earthquake-proof way. Ideas? I'd like to hang a 15 lb picture but there are no studs nearby, so I'll have to mount it on drywall. Any suggestions for a mounting setup that won't leave a large hole in the wall should a mild earthquake hit? Are two screws better than one larger screw in this case?

This previous AskMe was helpful. Perhaps molly bolts will work with something like an A-maze-ing picture hanger?

How best to hang an irregular piece of art on the wall?

andoatnp — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 15:20:38 -0800

What is the best way to hang a (somewhat irregular) piece of art in a building at my school? I'm a college student who was just given permission to hang a piece of art in the lounge area of our department building. The complication is that the piece is somewhat oddly shaped and made with barbed wire (so if it falls on someone, it might be a problem). Also, I don't know anything about hanging art.

The dimensions are 2ft by 3ft. I would guess it ways 8-10 pounds, but I don't own a scale. Here is a view from the front. The piece is also warped, which is caused by having pulled the barbed wire taunt and then stapling it in place on each end. Top and side pictures to show the curve.

The wall I'll be hanging it on is our department grad lounge. Here is a picture of the wall. I have no idea what it's made of, but I knocked on it, and it feels sturdy.

I'm supposed to set up a meeting with the building/mainetannce people to hang it up, and I'm wondering what would be the best way to do that. I'm thinking maybe attach some sort of wire to the back of it and then put a hook in the wall, but what kind of wire, and how should I attach it to the back? Any other ideas? I probably can't use the staple gun to attach the hanging wire that I used on the barbed wire because the staples go all the way through the wood board. Thanks for the help.

How to hang a large and heavy puzzle?

lollusc — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 21:11:50 -0800

How do I frame/hang a really enormous puzzle? I recently completed a 9000 piece puzzle that is 192cm x 138cm (76 inches by 54 inches for those of you of a non-metric persuasian). I want to hang it on my wall. I looked into puzzle glue, but it is not recommended for puzzles this large.

My husband's family always used to cover puzzles with clear contact (the sort you use to cover books), so we tried that (front and back). Unfortunately there are two problems:
1. It is not rigid. When we tried to hang it, it buckled and curled and bent.
2. The contact does not seem to hold every individual piece. When we tried hanging it, several chunks of puzzle detached themselves and fell down inside the plastic "envelope" formed by the contact. We managed to remove a bit of the contact and replace them, but obviously the contact is not sticky enough, or is not in touch with all of the pieces, or the weight of the puzzle is causing the pieces to detach.

So our thoughts now are:
1. glue the whole thing to a rigid backing of some sort? (After removing the contact from the back) We could use cardboard or foam, but I am concerned that this might not stick any better than the contact did. Also anything thicker than thin cardboard gets very heavy at this size.
2. glue a strip of rigid backing across the puzzle at several points? This would solve the rigidity problem, but not the detaching problem.
3. Something like one of these banner rails?

The third option seems like the best solution so far, so here is where my main question here comes in:

I cannot find a banner rail that is exactly the size we need (76 inches). The largest one I've found is 72 inches. It seems to have stoppers on each end (see the second link above). Does anyone have experience with these - is it possible to remove these stoppers and use the rail on something longer than it was designed for? Alternatively, if we buy two of the smaller plastic ones, could we join them side by side and have it still look okay? If we can't get exactly the right length there, could we trim one of the plastic rails down? Does anyone know if these sort of rails would hold something as heavy as a puzzle, rather than the posters they are designed for?

My other question is whether anyone has any better ideas for hanging this monster? We can't afford to have it professionally framed - I have done that with smaller pieces at a cost of several hundred dollars: I hate to think what it would cost for something this size. My budget is a maximum of $200.

Finally, a little bonus question: we are going to be moving overseas sometime in the next year. How the hell do we take something like this with us? Will it be easier if we DON'T mount it to anything beforehand?

In case anyone wants to recommend products or services, please bear in mind that I am in Australia.

Have you had any experience with 3M command strips?

austinlee — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:35:06 -0800

Have you had any experience with 3M command strips? I've used it once and everything seemed to work fine but wanted to hear other what other people thought before I used them for anything else. I'm more concerned with them keeping the object on the wall than if it pulls the paint off.

-austin

Off-the-shelf door replacement - easy?

amtho — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 15:34:02 -0800

Can I replace a 28-inch-wide interior (closet) door with a new one off the shelf at Lowe's or Home Depot, with no carpentry required? Or would I need to rout out the hinge areas and align the knob with the existing hit plate? Basically, my neighbor needs a new closet door. I think about just showing up with a door, but I'm not into doing a lot of carpentry for this project. Is it likely that a new one would "just fit"? Are hinges placed in standard locations on the door? Not interested in buying a pre-hung door with a frame - don't want to replace the frame (did that once).

We have identical, but reversed-floor-plan, condos, so I'm sure her closet door is similar to mine - standard, 28-inch wide, hollow core.

How do you hang things without leaving a mark?

zardoz — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 21:13:31 -0800

How do I hang things on the walls of my apartment without making holes/leaving marks? My apartment has plain white walls (with a kind of textured wallpaper; it's not smooth). I've got small stuff and heavy stuff that I'd like to hang up on the wall, from small picture frames to large, somewhat heavy piece of cloth.

I'm renting, so I obviously can't do whatever I'd like to the walls, and when I move out, they should be as clean as when I moved in. So no nail holes and the like. Or as an alternative, I'd chance making holes if I could patch it up when I move out, but given the textured pattern of the wallpaper, that may be tricky to do.

Any advice how to hang things? And a secondary question: how would you go about hanging a length of cloth about 3 feet wide by 5 feet long, lengthwise along the wall? Wires? Hooks?

cheap flexible wall surface for thumb tacks?

glenngulia — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 11:40:41 -0800

We live in a small, 100-yr-old house, thus after a couple of kids, my workspace (desk, PC, files, etc) got relegated to the basement. Help me figure out some sort of cheap, flexible surface to hang on my basement wall that I can put thumb tacks on (like you would with a corkboard). As you can imagine, the basement of a 100-yr-old house isn't the prettiest of spaces. I'm tired of looking my dreary foundation wall, plus would look to have a corkboard to hang things with thumb tacks. I have about 4' x 6' of wall space I'd like to cover.

Problem is, about halfway down, the wall angles out a bit, so hanging your standard corkboard wouldn't work. Any ideas on some cheap flexible surface I could use.

I Googled "flexible corkboard" and discovered cork sheets on a sites like this one, but it looks industrial & potentially expensive.

Any cheap solutions?

I want ready-made hardware that makes my picture look like it's floating off the wall

Opal — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:32:13 -0800

I want to hang this picture on the wall, but in a way that makes it look like it's an inch away from the wall. I know how to make that happen with a piece of wood wood and a sawtooth hanger, but are there any ready-made hardware or system that will achieve that? The picture is not framed, it's actually printed on a sheet of metal - think one of those old fashioned tin signs. I want it on the wall, but in a way that, when you're in front of it, it looks like it's floating off the wall, detached from it by about an inch.

Here's how I've done this before: I take a wood block, cut smaller than the object I want to hang, and attach it (usually with glue) to the back of it. Then I take a simple sawtooth hanger and nail/screw it to the wood and voila. So I'm actually hanging the wood block on the wall, and the picture is attached to the wood block. The final distance from my picture to the wall is the thickness of the wood block. This is how it looks.

Tell me someone came up with a picture hanging system that does exactly that and I can buy at Ace Hardware and not have to deal with cutting and painting and gluing wood blocks?

As for some of the existing solutions out there, this won't work because I need to sell each object individually and ready to hang; and this won't work because, even if I didn't mind the edges showing in front, they're too flat and the picture doesn't hang far enough from the wall.

So, what's ready-made and cheap and will solve my problem?

Hanging things from cement ceilings?

goodbyebluemonday — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 10:10:33 -0800

How can I hang something from the ceiling of my apartment if the ceiling is cement? I want to hang some paper lanterns in my apartment, but I live on the top floor so the ceiling isn't plaster--it's cement. I don't want to drill a hole with a drill because a.) my landlord would frown upon this and b.) can you even drill a pilot hole in cement?

I've tried command strip hooks and they've all fallen off within 12 or so hours of hanging. Maybe this is futile. Any ideas?

Help me hang my posters please

serazin — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:37:02 -0800

I have a large and beloved collection of People's History posters. Last year I had them mounted on thin foamcore (thinness illustrated here), thinking that would lengthen their lives, but I cannot keep them on my walls. So far I've tried two systems: 1) I put small nails above and below the posters, holding them in place between the nails. When the weather changed, almost all the posters shrunk or warped a bit, and dramatically fell from the walls. Next, I tried 2) these circles that spike into the foam (like these), and they still inexplicably just fall off the wall, leaving the spikes attached to the wall.

So, what's the best, affordable way to attach these fairly lightweight posters, without excessively scarring my rented walls?

Thanks!

Should I ask her out now?

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:31:14 -0800

I'm moving nine hours away and she'll be closer....eventually, should I ask her out beforehand? I met this girl through an online dating site. She was listed as looking for friends but I thought I'd try my luck and over the course of a few months we've been on three "hang outs" and it's been great.

I'm moving nine hours (car ride) away next week for a job and graduate school and she will be coming up in the summer (she is from there). Also a few months after she comes back up she will be going to Europe for 6 weeks for a study abroad program. After all is said and done she will be back home (where I will be).

My question is: should I ask her on a "date" next week with the express intention of telling her that I like her a lot or should I wait until summer, or should I wait until after the whole Europe stint?

I know (from reading a lot of askmeta) that long distance relationships don't work, but this one is confusing in its complications.

Another alternative I was considering was to just -over the phone- tell her how I feel about her.

Help.

Hang 'em high, or hang 'em low

Mountain Goatse — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 09:09:55 -0800

I'm hanging a large, 3'X5' framed mirror in my dining room. I'm going to hang it horizontally, and the room has an 8' ceiling. How high up on the wall should the mirror hang?

Picture collection - how to make it straight?

widdershins — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:22:40 -0800

What's the best way to hang a collection of small-to-large picture frames so that 1) they're all straight - and 2) stay that way? About a year ago, I made a 'family photo wall' with lots of pictures in varying sizes - about 25-30 pictures varying from 4x6 to 12x20. The pictures together form a rectangle on the wall, with the top of the top tier, the outside sides and bottom of bottom tier of frames lining up. I'm now hanging something else on this particular wall and want to move the collection to another wall. I've run into 2 problems:

1) It was really hard to get all the pictures to line up straight as needed. Because the frames are not uniform, there's a considerable difference in the distance between the hook and the top of the frame. I worked really hard at it the first time and it still didn't turn out exactly the way I wanted, so I'm looking for advice on how to do it better the next time. (Note: buying more uniform frames is not an option - I like the frames themselves very much.) Is there an easy tip I don't know about that doesn't involve measuring hook-to-top of frame distance to the millimeter for every single picture?

2) We have small kids and there is much potential for the pictures to get moved around and hang crooked. To eliminate this, I put doublesided stickytape on the bottom corner of most of the pictures - but that's causing the paint and plaster to come off the wall as I'm removing the pics. What's the best way to fix the pics in place when I redo the picture wall - with minimum damage to the wall?

Thank you very much for your help!

Hanging a frame with two hooks?

mattsweaters — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:44:10 -0800

Hanging a frame with two hooks? I have a frame with a hook on its right and left side. No matter what I do I can't seem to hang it straight. There must be a trick to figuring out where to put the second hook so its aligned.

I'm awful at this stuff so thank you!

Death penalty for small theft

KRS — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 06:11:01 -0800

"Must the maid hang?" -- death penalty quote Hanging used to be the penalty for any theft, even if a mother stole a loaf of bread to feed her children (see Les Miserables).

Then someone (perhaps John Dryden) seriously asked "Must the maid hang for stealing a loaf of bread?" Merely asking the question (at the right moment) made it self-evident that this was unjust.

Does anyone have the source of this probably mangled quote?

Movies where someone hangs onto the hood of a driving car?

asavage — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 14:21:35 -0800

MythbustersMovieStuntFilter: Movies where someone is hanging onto the hood (or roof) of a car, while the driver tries to shake them off. We've got Terminator, DeathProof, and Better off Dead, any others are greatly appreciated. (Guess which one of us gets to do this?)
Extra points for where I might look for that scene in the film.