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How do you hang stuff—from the walls or ceilings—around your house when you're decorating?
It took me a while to find a good, non-destructive way to put up posters in my living room. I think I started with blu-tack, which dried in a few months and the posters came down. Then I tried 3M's hanging strips, which stayed on the wall for longer, but was pretty expensive for what it was. A year ago I had the idea of using velcro that has adhesive tape on the other side. So far this has worked near perfectly for me.
I know I'm not breaking new ground here, but I was happy to finally find a decent solution. Well, at least for light objects on walls (and elsewhere).
Are you trying to avoid any hole in the wall? A properly placed drywall anchor will hold a ton of weight. I also bought some J hooks that you push into the wall and it makes a very small hole, about 1-1.5 mm, but they can hold a good amount of weight too.
I agree with this. A small hole on the wall is not very noticeable if you decide to take down the item later (and easily patchable if you really don't want any traces left).
I keep a bunch of thicker nails around that I use to hang up most frames and tidbits around the house. I just angle them downwards and hammer them in. For anything larger or heavier, a nail or screw will still work fine, just make sure it goes into a stud (assuming you live in a wooden-framed house, which not everyone does). And if you need to find a stud, a cheap magnetic stud-finder works pretty well, no need for anything fancy.
As a caveat to the drywall anchors:
Drywall anchors are good in the case that the thing that you are hanging does not move and the drywall itself is in good condition.
If you give those things any kind of side-to-side movement, they will start crumbling the drywall away and pretty quickly fail with a decent sized hole.
I helped a friend patch their wall because they used a drywall anchor to hold curtains up when not covering the window and over time the back and forth of the weight of the curtain just destroyed it.
Personally I have run into issues trying them in old drywall against exterior walls. Drywall does have a lifespan and if you are in a house with older walls then the drywall will fail at a lot lower weight than the anchor claims that it will. Still great for hanging pictures, but probably not a shelf.
Are you talking shitty 1990s style drywall anchors or the new style ones?
The 1990s style weren't even worth using, like ever .. on anything more than like a wall clock.
The new style holds like 80lbs per anchor and can CERTAINLY be used for mounting curtains, even heavy ones, with no worry about the slight movement.
Cool, I haven’t heard of J hooks. The product you linked to does say they’re suitable for plaster walls which is what I’m dealing with. Placing an order with fingers crossed!
Glad it can work for you! Enjoy!
Drywall anchors for almost everything. Maybe small nails or angled nail brackets for lighter stuff.
Adhesive solutions have always yielded damaged walls (paint peel, etc) or damaged decor (dimples, falls, etc).
Also like to frame/mount everything. It’s decor, make it nice. Could be a cardboard box backer with black edge tape.
I recently had all the drywall replaced in my house after reinsulating, and had a lot of pictures to rehang (and no skill to locate studs/didn't have a drill), so I went searching for something simple. I discovered 3M CLAW drywall hooks. You can hang frames up to 45 lbs, and so far nothing has crashed to the floor after 5 months.
You literally use two thumbs to shove the CLAW into the wall, and voila~ Art is hung!
I've been using these as well. They're great in my apartment, where I'm trying to keep holes as small as possible.
3M also has various Command Strip products. I've used some of the velcro-type ones for smaller things, as well as their "canvas hangers."
It was extremely expensive. The insulation and drywall together cost 30k. It had to be done because blown in was way more expensive than roll insulation. I bought an old, fucked up, very cheap house on a big lot, and basically gutted it, but it was still quite the surprise.
the Command strips are great, almost everything in my house is held up with them.
I don't use them on posters directly, instead I buy cheap simple frames, from Target for standard poster sizes like 24x36", or from Bez-Mart (eg) if it needs a non-standard size.
I always use the "picture hanging strips" - the type that are actually two adhesive strips joined by a Velcro-like connector, rather than the "poster strips" that are adhesive on both sides. that lets me pull the poster frame off the wall (since it's basically just Velcro'd on) and then remove the strips from the wall individually, which helps with the problem you mentioned of having the strips be partially visible at the bottom of the poster.
an important caveat to make Command strips work better - if you read the instructions, they tell you to push hard against the wall, and hold it there for 30 seconds. this is one of those times where those instructions really do matter. the strips use a pressure-sensitive adhesive so if you just push lightly against the wall, or only for a second or two, you won't get a strong bond.
and when removing them, make sure to pull straight down, parallel to the wall, and slowly but forcefully. if you pull away from the wall you'll usually take some paint with it.
@herbs too
3M has poster putty which works very well with raw posters rather than needing the claws or command Hooks. I’ve even used it to put on small frames.
I’m a heavy Blu-Tack user, I make stuff like
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/110607498804590869
How well it works depends on your paper and the paint on your wall. I had 8x8 cards I got from Michaels that I covered much of a wall with that curled heavily and kept coming off the wall, the 13x19 cards shown in that photo are much heavier than the average poster but I’ve only had one fall of about 25.
My take is that Blu-Tacked cards require some maintenance, sometimes they get loose and I can push them back into place, if one is really problematic I’ll take the card down, knead the Blu-Tack. and put it back.
That 3M Command stuff is highly effective but it is not safe for walls, I think it takes a chunk out of the wall about 20%, whereas the damage rate of Blu-Tack is more like 2% with the area damaged less than 10% of what is damaged by Command.
I just frame the posters myself and hang them like any other painting or wall hanging. Not sure if you're trying to avoid holes completely, but a teeny hole made from that is easily hidden in seconds with some drywall spackle.