She's Got a Great Rack

It all started when Little One wanted her coat.  She reached up, grabbed her coat, and yanked.  She yanked until she pulled the coat rack on the wall down about 1/4".  It dug a deep hole in the sheet rock.  Looking at my new safety hazard convinced me something needed to be done.

So I asked Darling to do something about it.  He said he'd take care of it.  That was several weeks ago.  What's a woman to do?  Right.  Take it in her own hands.

So I went to the store and bought new anchors and installed them.  Without measuring.  I figured since the rack had hung on the wall for 4 years, surely the measurement was right?  Right?  Wrong.  We'd (really, it was me, not "we") angled the hangars to make them fit.  

Undaunted by such trivialities as measuring, I pounded the anchors in the wall and then commenced to screwing in the 2" screws.  Then I tried to put the rack over the screws to tighten everything.  Two things went wrong.  The screw heads were too large and were in the wrong place.  I tried to remove the screws, but they'd activated the molly bolt mechanism in the anchors and weren't budging.  

 This time I measured and pounded in the anchors to the appropriate place.   See the holes below?  Those are the first try.  "Measure twice, cut once."  I could hear it in my head, but it didn't make it to my hammer-wielding arm.

As you can see, the screw on the bottom is in too far to pull out.  See the white anchor?  You nail them in with a hammer until they "take" to the wall.  Then you screw them in until they're flush with the wall.  See how it's smooth in the middle of it? That's actually the flared part unactivated.  As the screw gets pushed into the anchor, that part flares out to grab the sheet rock from inside the wall that gives the screw strength to hold

heavy things.  Clever, eh?

This would be the opportune moment to tell you that I had to move the second anchor just a tad to the right.  Um, evidently I cracked the sheet rock.  I know this because when I screwed in the anchor to the correct place, I broke through the sheet rock and the anchor went in sideways, then crashed straight through the wall to it's eternal resting place on the floor inside the wall.

The wadded paper is there because it's easier to patch a wall with spackle if there's something for it to grab, like a wad of paper.  Here's my prep for fixing the wall.  Turns out we don't have any leftover paint from when we painted this room.  And Home Depot doesn't carry that color anymore.  Did I cry?  No!  I did not.  I acted like a man and pouted and was most unpleasant about it all.  Probably should have cried.  

And this is the left side of the wall.  The anchor had to be shoved through.  Pretty, isn't it?

So what's a girl to do when she's wrecked her wall and doesn't want to patch holes because she doesn't have paint?  Install strategically-placed hooks instead!  Nice, aren't they?

Pretty, pretty.  Don't look too closely or you'll see where I didn't patch the wall.

Bah!  I said don't look too closely!

And please don't notice that I covered the metal with black sharpie.  Really, it looks better in person.  Really.

Besides, in the above pic with the hats and coats, you can't tell the hook on the left was sharpied.  And, really, if someone comes to my house and gets offended that I sharpied the screws, they probably aren't worth hanging out with anyway.

While I was at it, why not install hooks for the kids' coats?  After all, Little One reaching her own coat is what started it all. More hooks.  Yeah, that's the ticket.

Little One's coat within her reach.  Hopefully. Like the stair step effect up the wall? Nice, right?  My darling friend who came over to help me retain the last bits of my brain came up with that idea.  Love her!

And this is the rack that started it all.  It now adorns another wall. Great rack, eh?  I need to get some sharpie on those screws...

Maybe this section of the blog should be called "Domestic Kinda-Know-How?"

~ G