Rehanging coat hooks

[Fevric J. Glandules]

No doubt a silly question to some of you... I am rehanging a coat hook (i.e. a strip of wood with hooks on it, which itself hangs off two screws in the wall).

The wall is old and the plaster crumbly and the previous

40mm screws all came out after a couple of years of being tugged on by small children.

I've bunged some all-purpose filler into the holes.

Q: is there any point in trying to fix some new 60mm screws into the *same* holes? It'd be neater if I could rehang it in the same place. Or will the filler simply not take any sort of weight?

Yours in noobiness,

Fevric.

[Tricky Dicky]

Presumably the wall plugs the screws went into came out with the screws, ha ving now filled the holes which contained the wall plugs are also filled. T rying to re-drill these will probably leave a hole the wall plug will not s it in tight. I would recommend off-setting the holes slightly either up/dow n or sideways hopefully the wood will still cover the repair. Wall plugs wo rk by the screw expanding the plug thus gripping the sides of the hole putt ing in a longer screw simply makes no difference unless the screws were too short in the first place. If you want to use longer screws you will need l onger wall plugs, length of screw should be approx. the thickness of the wo od plus the length of the wall plug or slightly longer. Drill a hole slight ly deeper (we are only talking mm here) than the amount the screw will go i nto the wall this will ensure the plug will expand along its full length gi ving better grip.

Richard

[Graham.]

Depends what is behind the plaster. If its brick or block drill well into it, and then insert a wall plug and use a longer screw. Tap the plug into the brick by hammering the screw then screw it up.

[Fevric J. Glandules]

Thanks to you and Graham for the advice.

I went for moving the whole shebang an inch and a half to the right. I used 60mm screws. The previous 40mm screws-and-plugs had been sitting in very soft old (1890s?) brick and plaster. So the plug had very little purchase.

Hopefully the new arrangement will survive Fevric Junior's attempts to get his coat down by tugging on it.

[Jonathan]

, having now filled the holes which contained the wall plugs are also fille d. Trying to re-drill these will probably leave a hole the wall plug will n ot sit in tight. I would recommend off-setting the holes slightly either up /down or sideways hopefully the wood will still cover the repair. Wall plug s

In the past I have solved the problem by filling the hole with polyfilla an d then pushing in the rawlplug. If you wait for the filler to dry it can gi ve your quite a strong fixing. However Junio's efforts may defeat whatever you do.

Jonathan

[meow2222]

In such a situation I stick PVA in the hole then fill it. And use much deeper screws. Bad masonry calls for 2 wallplugs in series - cut the lip off the first one. Thin long screws, eg 3" plasterboard screws, with a pair of smallish size plugs.

NT