Advice on wall fixings required

[Jim Burrows]

Full of Bank Holiday spirit I decided to replace the crappy old Swish curtain rail above my patio dorrs with a nice new curtain pole - All was going swimmingly until drilling the holes for the mountings I came slap bang up against the lintel about 3/4's of an inch below the plaster. Foolishly I'd assumed I'd be able to drill into this as the previous owner had for the swish rail, but it's made of sterner stuff than my drill bits.

What's my best course of action now please ? Refitting the swish rail isn't an option as it was on it's last legs, and the missus has started tutting already.

[Owain]

What's the lintel made of?, and use the apprpriate bit.

This might be an excellent excu^Wreason to treat yourself to a bank holiday special SDS drill.

Owain

[Roger Mills]

Depends what the lintel is made of. Assuming it's concrete, you need a decent SDS drill - which will go into concrete like it was cheese, compared with an ordinary hammer drill.

The other possibility is that it could be a steel box section (Catnic-type) lintel - in which case you'll need a good metal drill and some large self-tapping screws.

You may have to chip away a bit of plaster the size of an old penny to expose the lintel and determine what it's made of.

[Gordon Hudson]

A professional might actually glue a strip of wood on with no more nails and screw into that. Don't laugh, I have seen the inside of a fitted wardrobe put together that way by a house builder until the clothes were hung onthe rail and the paint came away from the wall. The glue held nicely though.

[Mr Fuxit]

If the missus thinks she can do better then just hand her the tools and let her get on with it.

[TMC]

Use some of the existing holes to fit a bit of 2 x 1 to the wall then put the curtain fittings into this

Even if you are able to drill new holes I would still use them to fix the timber and then mount the rail on to it.

Tony

[Matt]

Earplugs?

[John Cartmell]

Or just try using a metal drill and see what happens?

[Jim Burrows]

A splendid suggestion - and although it was an emergency buy I'm now trhe proud owner of a B&D SDS drill, now patiently searching out something to use the chisel aattachments on.

Curtains now up & the wife's now tutting about something completly different !

[Brian Sharrock]

Are all your electrical outlets flush with the wall or are they on those ugly surface patresses? Are your existing socket outlets single gang? Don't yuo really want them all to be double gang? - Lot's of 'excuses' to use the chisel attachments! :)

Always the way !