DIY Life

The living room in my house has a slightly unusual layout. Its got a nice brick fireplace; the interesting thing about it is that it's not smack dab up against an exterior wall. It stands not in the center of the room, but several feet off the back wall. It serves as a separator between the living room and the dining area/breakfast nook. Because of this, it's got three sides that just beg for artwork. But how to attach a secure hanger on a brick surface? It's easy and cheap!

What You'll Need

• Electric drill
• Masonry bit
• Chunk of dowel
• Picture hanger
• Screw (3/4 inch long)
• Drill bit a bit smaller than the screw
• Wood glue

The Procedure

1. Grab a masonry bit that's just a hair smaller than the mortar joint between the bricks.
2. Drill straight into the mortar joint about an inch.
3. Blow or vacuum the mortar dust out of the hole.
4. Cut a piece of dowel the same size as the drill bit, slather some wood glue on it and tap it into the hole.
5. Once the glue dries, drill a pilot hole and screw in the picture hanger.

The beauty of this is that you can always drill the dowel out and re-mortar the hole.

Does an arrangement like this make you flee, for fear of your wall crumbling around the multitudes of nails used to hang all of the pictures?

It used to make me run too, especially in our first house, an antique with the original plaster walls. It took us years to work up the courage to hang anything up, and even then, we did crumble some of the walls a bit.

Using this trick will save your walls and make it easy to hang pictures without mistakes and a bunch of nail holes.

It's easy:

1. Make a kraft paper template of each picture you wish to hang.
2. Use blue painter's tape to attach the kraft template and figure out where you want the picture to go.
3. Put picture hanging hardware on walls, directly through the paper.

The pictures will be exactly where you want them, the walls won't crumble and everyone will be happy.

This technique works much better than the ol' masking tape trick, so give it a try.