Thursday, March 16, 2006

Up against the wall anchor

Towel bars. Dry wall. Screws. Wall anchors. Anxiety.


Wall anchors, those little plastic ribbed cones you drive into dry wall or plaster so you can attach a fixture using screws, have always made me nervous.

When do you use a plastic one? When do you use the ribbed hammer-in type and when do you use the threaded drive-in type? What about the weird little lead anchors? And when do you use a toggle instead?

Most of all...when you remove a fixture for good, and want to patch, spackle and paint the wall, how do you get the *&%*#-ing anchor out so it doesn't leave a lump?

At last, the answers to all the questions: The guide to fasteners at Natural Handyman.

Turns out you can remove the little plastic cones simply by inserting a long screw a bit of the way in, then using the screw as a handle and wiggling the anchor out. (Did everyone else know this? I must have missed shop class that day. Ooops...when I was in school, they didn't let girls take shop.)

2 comments:

  1. Thanks I didn't know this and your post was a great help to me!!

    Go Saints!!!!

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  2. Anonymous2:35 PM

    Too many layers of paint. Used the long screw and tapped them further into the plaster, leaving slight dimples to spackle. Why they used anchors to attach Aprilaire controls I'll never know.

    GO PACKERS!!!!!!

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