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mounting a board on floated drywall

12 years ago

this seems pretty basic, but i'm not quite sure about the best approach.

i'm hanging a 1x4 board horizontally in my kitchen and a 1x2 parallel beneath it. the 1x4 will have hooks in it to hold my cast iron skillets and the 1x2 is a bumper to protect the wall.

my kitchen is drywall that is floated out from the plaster underneath with furring strips. so the studs are nearly impossible to find and in any case very deep being beneath drywall, an air gap, plaster, and lath.

my first thought was to mount my board to the furring strips, but that doesn't seem like a good idea because of the weight. my next thought is to use wall anchors, but then i would have large screw heads exposed on the front of the board.

any ideas for this basic task? ideally, i'd like to not see any evidence of the fastener on the front of the board.

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Comments (5)

brickeyee
12 years ago
How thick are the furring strips?

You may need to find the studs and use long enough screws to reach well into them, and make sure they are large enough (diameter) screws for the weight also.

Another alternative is to open up the drywall, then the old wall, and install blocking between studs.

I have a bunch of copper pans on a rack, and it is mounted with 1/4 lag screws well into the studs.

It is a half circle so it sticks out about 16 inches and provides a lot of leverage, despite having an angled brace on the top.

You will not have as much leverage hanging the pans almost flat to the wall, but the load is still very high when it gets to a few screws into studs.
civ_IV_fan
Original Author
12 years ago
well i can insert a nail about 1 1/4 inches into the sheetrock before i feel them hit the plaster. if the sheetrock is 1/2" (installed years ago, may be thicker), that means the furring strips are about 3/4"

it's a fairly narrow area and i'm only hanging two skillets up. the weight load will be about 30 pounds. the length of the board is about three feet.
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This question is confusing. Does it only involve the exterior wall? Do the interior walls have shiplapped boards and if so why would the boards be structural? Is there no structural panel sheathing on the outside of the exterior studs? Sheathing provides two structural benefits: 1) resistance to lateral forces parallel to the exterior wall (but only if the sheathing extends to and is properly attached to the face of the first and second floor framing) and 2) resistance to wind forces perpendicular to the exterior wall (but only if the sheathing is attached to the outside face of the exterior studs). Boards or sheathing on the inside of the exterior studs or on any interior studs will provide little if any structural benefit to the frame of the house. If the house doesn't have any sheathing or diagonal bracing at the exterior walls, you need to consult an engineer to design a system of interior plywood shear walls bolted to the floor structures above and below to provide adequate structural bracing. These shear walls would not necessarily be located near your bathroom.
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don92
12 years ago
use a 2 1/2" trim screw. The head is no bigger than a nail head and can be puttied
snoonyb
12 years ago
There are also "buttons" designed to insert into exposed screw heads.
civ_IV_fan
Original Author
12 years ago
thanks for the help, everybody.

i ended up using 1 1/2" wire brads to affix the board to the wall, mounting it to the furring strip underneath. then i took two 3" #6 screws with small heads (the longest trim screw i could find was 2 1/4") and ran those into the studs, one on each end of the boards. i think i grabbed about 1/2" of the stud underneath. it is holding great.

now if only i could figure out a way to get my wife, who asked me to do this, a way to say thank you or something other than, "i can't believe you painted the end of the board white" -- that's all another story though

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