Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Hanging pictures in my new apartment

As mentioned in a previous post, I moved in April. It is now the end of August and there are still pictures to hang. In general, I used nails or screws that were already in the wall to hang things, even when the location was not exactly what I would prefer. Except for the kitchen, the bathroom, and my office, the apartment has picture molding in the five other rooms. I was required to use clips to hang pictures on picture molding when I lived in the University of Houston dormitories some years ago. Remarkably, I still have two of those clips from college today. I have visited countless hardware stores in my area looking for similar picture hanging clips. There are generally two types of clips that the stores have had and neither work on my molding.

The Internet to the rescue! Since I spent a lot of time looking and reviewing, I have decided to make an entry here for my own reference. Perhaps others will also benefit. The picture molding is also referred to as picture rails, which is sometimes called Ogee or OG molding. What I have called clips are called picture hooks, picture molding hooks, picture rail hooks, and S-hooks. The rails and hooks were the preferred solution to decorating plaster and lath walls in the 1880's through the 1920's and into the 1930's. Yes, the house I now live in was probably built in the latter part of that time period.

In the realm of "how to" sites, the following are arranged from best to good:
Here are the sites with noteworthy picture rail hooks (in random order):
I was planning to use monofilament to hang my pictures, but will switch to wire or cord. The violinist I bought in Paris weighs between 12 and 13 pounds, so I could probably use a cream or gold colored cord as the picture lends itself to antiquity. It will go in my living room with one wall inspired by Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (Google Books, Wikipedia, Amazon). In my searching for picture hooks, I discovered that someone else did a wall inspired by this book (OK, the site that led me here was the Adirondack Boys blog). I will add a photo of the violinist picture hanging in my livingroom as soon as I get it completed.

3 comments:

Solana said...

Thank you so much for cataloging these sites, they are very helpful. We are hanging a heavy world map from picture molding and understanding different ways to do it will really save us heartache.

Mary said...

Thank you so much! I've been trawling the internet for days, accumulating bits and pieces of information - and you've got everything I need right here! Thank you thank you thank you! Mary

Unknown said...

Just what I needed to get the job done, thank you!