Hanging pictures on crumbly plaster walls!!

blue1_2

Does anyone have any suggestions how to hang pictures on my walls - trying to hammer in picture hooks results in chunks of plaster coming off!

HugoSP

OK, I assume your walls are lime rendered/plastered, with either an old brick or stone substrate.

This being the case you have obviously found that normal picture hooks are no good.

The only way to achieve this is to drill a 6 or 7 mm hole, then use a rawl plug and a 2" screw in its place.

If it's a stone wall then you'll need an SDS drill to do this and you risk going into mortar thus making a bigger mess.

blue1_2

They are brick walls so hopefully that shoud work!!!

HugoSP

blue1 wrote:

They are brick walls so hopefully that shoud work!!!

Then the brick should be relitively soft. Use a normal drill and masonery/multi purpose bit and the larger brown plugs. Use a 6mm bit first and try the plug in there first then open it up with a 7mm if that doesn't work.

A 2" screw will be plenty long enough. Check that you're not drilling into buried cables. Use a cable detector and check that you're not drilling above light switches/sockets etc. Electricians usually (but not always) run the cable up vertically from light switches and sockets etc.

Also, with an older house, check you're not drilling into old gas lines - In the late 80s my victorian terrace had live gas lines that fed gas lights!

Yes, the builder doing renovations ripped them off the walls thinking they were dead and we couldn't light the boiler when we moved back in. BG cut off our supply and we had to get the builder back to get it sorted. The new meter had been fitted a few years before, and the fitters saw fit to reconnect the gas going upstairs for some reason. We had no upstairs gas fires.