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Tommy, we're getting a lot of letters from folks who want to properly hang a picture or a heavy mirror, and it makes sense they want to get it in the right place and make sure it stays there. So do you have any tips for us?
Absolutely. The first thing you want to know is what your wall is made of. If you live in an older house, say from the 1940s or older, it's probably a plaster and lath wall. Plaster is very brittle, so you have to be careful with the hanger. You don't want to use a drywall hanger on this because you could damage the plaster and the wall.
So what do you recommend we use?
I recommend this right here. This is an old tried-and-true toggle bolt. It's a spring-loaded nut, and you want to use a picture hanging hook on it. You must drill a hole in the plaster first. What you've done here is use the nut and push it through the wall, and when you push it through, the spring opens up. You pull back on it and tighten it with a screwdriver, and that will go tight against the lath. I'm tightening it from behind, but you'd actually be doing this from the front with a screwdriver, until it is nice and tight. That will hang just about any picture you want without damaging the wall.
Now, we all don't have plaster and lath. A lot of us have drywall, and there are many different fasteners for drywall: plastic molly bolts, toggles, and screws, for example. This is a large screw that goes into the drywall. You drive it in with a hammer, and it goes in so far. Then you take your screw gun and screw it into the drywall, back the screw off, and you can hang the picture right on that. This is the old tried-and-true picture hanging hook, and they work fantastic.
All of these fasteners have a maximum weight rating, which means we need to know the weight of our picture, or in this case our mirror. We can find that easily using a bathroom scale, and it looks like it's about 30 pounds. Okay, I'm going to use this fastener right here. This one fastener is rated for 30 pounds, but I'm going to use two of them. Is this just belt and suspenders?
Well, yes, but it gives me a couple of options. It also allows me to slide the mirror to the left and right just a little bit, because I have two of them. It also keeps the mirror from going askew.
Good point. Okay, so where do you want to locate this mirror?
Let's position it on the wall about where we think we want it. I want the top of the mirror here, and the center of it about there. If that's the top, we actually have to measure down from there to take into account this wire. If we just had one hook, I'd measure down about three and a half inches. But you're going to use two, so it depends on the spacing between each hook. If you go a little wider, the wire goes a little lower, and if you go closer, it comes up. To know that height, I like to take a scrap piece of wood, like this one, about 12 inches long, and mark the center. I center it on the mirror, eyeballing it, and hold it tight to the wire. Now I measure down from the top of the mirror five inches. So I measure down for my line on the wall and make a five-inch mark. I take my scrap of wood with its center line, line it up here, and mark it right there. I take a little level, make it level, and mark the ends of the corners on each side. That's where we position the hooks. We want to make sure the bottom of the hook goes on that mark, so I'll locate it and tap this in. Okay, I'll put the second hook up. We'll get the mirror ready.
Okay, I'm on my hook.
Me too. Nice job, Tommy. Those are some good tips. Looks good.