Easiest Way to Hang a Heavy Picture or Mirror

hanging a heavy picture or mirror on the wall does not have to be a major undertaking you don't need many tools you don't need much experience and there's one product that i go to for about 80 or 90 percent of my needs where i'm hanging something on either drywall or older plaster walls like this one i'll do a demo with this full length 25 pound mirror behind me and then we'll finish off with something you should be thinking about and that is hey when i want to remove this from the wall whether i'm renting or maybe i'm moving out of my home and i'm getting it ready for sale how am i going to get my walls back to normal looking good and we want to avoid as much damage as possible so let's jump into hanging this full length mirror so first step i just want to position the mirror where i want it on the wall because i'm going to measure the top surface which we'll reference later on and additionally this mirror is going to be spaced five inches away from the wall so i'll just go ahead and give a reference mark which will be the left edge of the mirror so now taking a look at the mounting hardware on this mirror this is by far my favorite setup and that is d-rings securely fastened into the frame that'd be as opposed to maybe you have a wire stretching between because if you know the height that you want that wire is going to give quite a bit so it's a little bit harder to get your measurements to where to put the holes in your wall so this is my favorite setup i'll have a screw that's going to hook onto that d-ring and that screw has a nice little pan head which has a straight lip that's going to hold that d ring the weight of the picture is going to hang and it's not going to want to jump off that screw so that would be opposed to if you had something like a countersunk head that's angled and it'd be a little bit more prone for that possibly to jump off your attachment points so really the only measurement i need right now is to measure from the top edge of my mirror which i know where i want that on the wall and measure down to where that screw is going to hold this d ring and for me that is 19 and 3 8. so i'll transfer that measurement on the wall locating just the screw for this d-ring and then i'll show you how to reference that screw location once it's already attached to get your second hole location so i'll take the end or the hook of my tape measure and that will be at the top surface measuring down 19 and 3 8 to get the vertical mark for that d ring location then i'll take horizontally and i'll measure 5 inches again away from the wall and then make another mark and x marks the spot where i want my first anchor so now we have our whole location at least for the first one and we're ready to put hardware into the wall so let's talk about my recommendation and that is drywall anchors from easy anchor now you'll see a link down in the description and you'll also see these recommended on my amazon store which has recommendations to all the different tools i use and also supplies like this i carry two different types of easy anchors on me at all time the smaller one which can carry 40 pounds per anchor and the larger which can carry 50 pounds per anchor it is very important that you get the metal anchors there are many plastic anchors that look very similar to this i don't think they work nearly as good as these metal anchors and there are also several metal anchors out there but specifically easy anchor is thought through the tip design and that works really well with grabbing onto that drywall grabbing onto that plaster and pulling the anchor in opposed to possibly damaging the drywall and never really getting a good hold and all you need is a screwdriver no drills needed no fancy tools just a screwdriver and i'll show you so plaster can be a little bit tricky and because the plaster is so brittle you can have it kind of chip off a little bit more than what you would see in drywall but all you need is your number two your number two phillips head screwdriver that's going to fit right into the easy anchor you place it on your location and then i usually do give it a nice little tap and kind of set that tip first before i start turning the easy anchor and then i do place force on the wall as i turn in the easy anchor because that's going to help those threads grab onto the wall and then pull the anchor in making sure you're not damaging the drywall or the plaster now one thing is you can notice that it gets a little tight there at the end but you want to make sure that the anchor is flush with the wall surface so you might need to pull that in a little bit more i'll give it a little bit more of a turn all right so that's good now i'll take the screw and set that in place now you could use an impact driver or a drill to make this job quicker but that also does increase the risk of damage so i just prefer to use a screwdriver take a little bit more time but lower the risk of causing any damage so i'll set that screw into the anchor until i reach about a quarter of an inch off the wall and then i'll stop because i do want a little bit of a lip here for that d-ring to set on top of now we want to position our second anchor we need a reference dimension between the two mounting d-rings so you go peak to peak and i have 19 and 1 8 of an inch between the two d-rings so that's the reference dimension i need to get that second anchor location so what i usually go with is i use my 48 inch johnson level i actually set the level on top of the screw so i do have to make up that distance just a little bit i'm butting the level against the wall and now i've transferred the dimension on the level marking it right here with a dry erase marker not a permanent marker i just want to wipe it off later on and not mark up my level so then i make sure my bubble is right in the middle and then i go ahead and transfer that okay now i have my location for my second anchor so what if you do not have a large level that would make up for it well actually on your iphone i'm sure android has this too you can go to the measurement app and there's a level feature in there where you can just tape it to a straight edge like this and something very similar where i have a reference mark here which i'm going to position on my first anchor and then 19 and 1 8 of an inch offset from that i made another mark and now we'll go ahead and line that up and that would be again pretty close to that line i did with the bubble level the only drawback on this and it turns green once you're in the level zero degree range is there is a little bit more error so there's negative one there there's negative one sorry there's one and and there is negative one so i kind of go between those ranges find it and try to hit that zero mark to be as accurate as possible but surprisingly this actually works fairly well if you're limited on the tools or levels that you have at your disposal so let's sync our second anchor now that we have the location so it's now time to check our work i'm going to take the mirror with the d-rings leaning out slightly i'll catch one of those screws and then i'll do the same thing on this side with the d-ring hanging out slightly making sure it has a secure hold and it's on the wall so now we have it securely mounted it passes the eyeball test but i do like to check with my little torpedo level as well and the bubble is right in the middle so that's good to go i do also recommend you have attachment points here and then a little bit of weight on the bottom so the mirror wants to rest against your wall so it's always good to have maybe some bumper pads on the left and right corner of that bottom frame and that will just protect your wall a little bit because you might have some additional mounting hardware if it slides on the wall can really scratch it up additionally i think it's good to think about now what happens if i want to remove those anchors i have a little bit of drywall damage i recommend this product made by 3m for diy homeowners that don't have a bunch of tools you don't have a bunch of different size putty knives you might not have that much experience this actually is all you need for small holes like that you'd have a putty knife to scrape things off this is spackle and primer in one without the primer when you roll on your new paint you might actually have a difference between the little hole you patched and the rest of the wall surface so the primer helps to mitigate that issue again you have that putty knife to smooth off the spackle once you apply it and then a little sanding pad once it dries to smooth off that patch and try to match it up with the rest of your wall surface now don't forget you need to know your wall color for instance this is a sherwin williams friendly yellow the code is 6680 i used super paint and the sheen was called satin so you even need to know the sheen or it's not really going to match up and small holes might result in you repainting the whole wall even if you think you have a color match but you don't have the exact one now if you want to dive more into this product and see how i patched a small amount of drywall damage from a larger thermostat when i swapped it out for a nest check out this video right here it'll go through the full application and again i think this is purpose built for diy-ers and that's also why you find it in our amazon store so thanks for joining us on this video and we'll catch you on the next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 188,770

Keywords: best drywall anchors for mounting tv, hanging level pictures, securing heavy mirror to wall, everyday home repairs, DIY

Id: PAZsaj3aIqo

Length: 10min 53sec (653 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 24 2022