Hanging stuff: nails, screws, anchors and toggles

Last night, I was watching a design show on TV (you can learn a lot from those shows; more on that another day). They were loading in on the final day getting ready for the big reveal! Anyway, they were hanging shelves and the brackets wouldn't stay in properly, wouldn't safely hold the weight of the shelves and what they wanted to put on them.

First, they tried just screwing the brackets in (meanwhile, I'm watching and wondering what's behind those walls that makes them able to use just screws, maybe plywood or studs). It soon became clear there was no wood behind those walls holding those screws because they easily came out when any pressure was applied to the bracket.

So, out come the "anchors" (I explain what "anchors" are below) and, nope, that wasn't enough either. I'm in my chair yelling, "Use toggles!" But they wouldn't listen. They wrung their hands and banged their heads on the floor and then the homeowner came in, pointed out crawl space behind the wall (because it was an attic), and put up a piece of plywood on the other side of that wall so they had something substantial to drill into. That obviously worked but you can't always access the space behind your walls to add plywood. And toggles, I tell you, are a wonderful thing.

So, what am I talking about?

1. Nails. Most of us have banged a nail into a wall to hang a picture. Where hanging stuff is concerned, most of us know what nails can do. What they can't do is hold up brackets (for shelving, etc.) with any degree of reliability, unless you're nailing into a stud, but then, screws are still better. Why? Ever tried pulling out a nail with the back side of a hammer? Comes out fairly easily. Ever tried pulling out a screw with the back side of a hammer? You'll rip your wall apart. If you want to take a screw out, you unscrew it; you don't pull it. So, where holding up a shelf or a curtain rod or whatever is concerned, if what you are screwing into can hold that screw securely, then it isn't coming out easily when you pull on it. A nail? Not so reliable.

2. Screws. Half the story on screws is in #1 above. Also, about screws, it's a whole lot easier to first drill a hole for your screw and then either use your drill (you can replace drill bits with screwdriver tips) to put the screw in or screw it in with a hand screwdriver, your preference. BUT when you drill that hole, make it only as wide as the part of the screw that doesn't have the threads on it, the nail part running through the center that the screw threads are attached to. Otherwise, if the hole is as wide as the screw including its threads, you're turning the screw into a nail and the screw threads have nothing to grip onto.

3. Anchors. You may have noticed when ordering curtain rods that sometimes, included with your order, you'll find little plastic plugs, often in red (see photo) or grey, which seem superfluous. They're not. When screws alone are not strong enough to hold your bracket (or whatever) because the material you're screwing into won't hold them securely, try anchors. (While there are metal anchors for various purposes too, we'll stick with plastics ones here, to keep it simple.) You'll need to drill your hole a bit bigger than for the screw alone but not so big the anchors just slide into the hole easily. You want to have to tap them in with your hammer. If, when you tap, you end up crushing them, you're hole is too small but if they go in too easily, your hole is too big. Once your anchor is in the wall properly, screw in your bracket. The screw will go inside the anchor and be "anchored" in the wall with the help of those little plastic things!

4. Toggles. I was first introduced to toggle bolts many years ago when I was living in an artists' loft in Roxbury (part of Boston). Open-plan living is great and very liberating, but sometimes walls are a beautiful thing. Faced with this issue, we decided to "curtain off" a portion of the loft with a big, heavy curtain that could hold its own over a big expanse of space (about 12 feet wide x 10 feet high), i.e., create a "wall." Great. But big, heavy curtains are, well, heavy. And no ordinary screwed-in bracket is going to hold a metal pole with a huge heavy curtain on it. Ever have the experience with those shower curtain tension rods that fall down in the middle of the night because they just can't hold the weight of your shower curtain for any length of time? Well, that's what I'm talkin' about. If what that rod is holding (e.g., a curtain) is too heavy for what's holding it (e.g., screws in an ordinary wall or, in this case, a ceiling), then the whole thing's comin' down!

As it turned out, my loftmate grew up in a family where folks built their own homes, so he knew about lots of building details, like toggles. And we used the mother of all toggles to hold that curtain up. It worked great!

So, what are toggles? Toggles are weird, long, blunt-ended screws with wings. When installing them, you'd swear you're doing more damage than good, but you're not. They work! Here's how:

a. Go to your hardware store, bringing your bracket with you, and ask where the toggles are. (You can tell the guy what you want to do and he'll help you pick out what you need.) You want the screw part (not the wing part) of your toggles to both fit through the screw holes in your bracket AND accommodate the thickness of your walls when the wings are compressed and attached to the screw. I know this might not make sense at the moment, but if you have plaster and lath walls, for example, you want screws that look ridiculously long. If you have regular wall board, you want screws that look too long but not ridiculous.

Back home....

b. Fold the wing part of your toggle and find a drill bit that will make a hole just big enough for that folded wing thing to get through.

c. Thread the screw part through the hole in your bracket (or whatever you're mounting). Yup, you do this is BEFORE you put it into the hole in the wall. (You'll notice the hole is way too big for that screw to do anything anyway.)

d. Screw the wing part onto the screw end sticking through the back of your bracket so that the wing doesn't fall off. But leave enough slack so that when the wing is compressed (flattened) and you push all this through your big hole in the wall, your wing completely clears the thickness of your wall. Make sure you have the wing part facing in the right direction so that when it's compressed, it will insert into the wall. (See photo)

e. Push the screw with compressed wing (facing in the correct direction) through the hole in the wall until you feel the wing pop through on the other side of the wall. To help it along, you may have to take your screwdriver, insert it into the screw head and with the back of your hand or a hammer, give the heel on the handle of the screwdriver a little tap.

f. Once the wing is on the other side of the wall, begin tightening the screw. This may seem to take forever and you may think you're doing it wrong. But just hang in there. Eventually, the bracket will come flush against the wall and tighten up, very firmly. What's happening is that the wings have extended on the other side of the wall and these wings (on one side) and your bracket (on the other side) are sandwiching the wall in between them, forming a very secure hold. I love toggles!

There is another option for hanging very heavy objects (like large leaning mirrors somebody wants to hang on the wall or built-ins), namely, use cleats. Cleats are pieces of board that can be used for all sorts of things but, in this instance, it's a board (or boards) used to span an area behind your heavy object into which you can securely attach screws or other hangers to hold your object up. It's sort of like the plywood-on-the-opposite-side-of-the-wall solution mentioned at the beginning of this post, but cleats usually are on the same side of the wall as the object you're hanging. This type of situation likely won't come up often, bu if you find yourself in need, ask someone about cleats!

These handy accoutrements will take care of just about all of your "hanging stuff" needs. Give them a try and enjoy!