I have a lovely big mirror and a lovely big mirror-sized spot on my living room wall about 5’ off the ground.
The mirror is very heavy, and I worry that if I put it up it will come crashing down, breaking the mirror and my computer and any poor soul who happens to be standing underneath.
But I really want to put the mirror up !
Can someone help me figure out how to do it at minimal risk to life and limb?
Details, and please forgive my total ignorance on how to describe such things:
I don’t know what the wall is made of. The house is an old mansion that’s been split into apartments, and the wall in question was added when the apartments were made. It seems solid, we have shelves drilled into another part of it that are still hanging (although we’ve only lived there a month).
The mirror is about 5’6" by 3’, with a wooden frame. I want to hang it horizontally. There are two pieces that run across the width of the frame, about twelve inches in from each end.
I just went through this exact process with a mirror from an old dresser - it weighed in about 75 lbs.
Go to Lowe’s or Home Depot and tell them what you’re doing. They’ll direct you to the hardware you’ll need - a stud finder (not THAT kind, pervert), hangers, and wire.
Use the stud finder to locate two wall studs (they’re probably about 16" from each other). Mark the center of the studs with a pencil. Now you’re ready for the mirror.
Measure down about 1/3 the back of the mirror. Attach eye bolts or the rings that are recommended by the Lowe’s guy into the frame. Knot the wire on one ring, run it over to the other ring, run it back to the point of beginning, and twine the wire around itself. You should allow enough slack in the wire so that the center of the wire you’ve run between the rings will reach the top center of the mirror.
Attach the hangers (use two) to the wall in the studs you’ve marked (the hangers we used looked too small, but are designed so that the nails go in at an angle and bear more weight), remembering that there’s slack in your wire.
One hangs the mirror, supporting it while the other tells the hanger “Up on the left…lower…up on the right…OK.”
Hold your breath (at least we did - our mirror is over a $5,000 mahogany side board and about another $5,000 worth of crystal).
I make these for a living and do not attach wire, nor do I recommend that my clients add it themselves. When people come in with a mirror they’ve bought elsewhere and ask me to add wire to it I don’t do it. There’s a reason there’s no wire on there in the first place. I don’t remember the actual numbers, but the amount of downward pressure on the wire in pounds is much greater than the weight of the mirror.
What I do recommend is contacting a local picture framing store. If you can spend a little extra money on the project ask for the name of a professional hanger (yeah, really, that’s some people’s actual job - if your area framers don’t know of one call art galleries or a museum). If you are inclined to do it yourself ask if you can buy some type of security hardware from them. There are several types of this but basically there are parts that attach to the wall, parts that attach to the frame and they have to be lined up for the piece to hang properly.
Another method is a french cleat same as used in cabinet hanging. It distributes the weight of the mirror in a way that ultimately is much more reliable than hanging off wire.
I don’t mean to alarm you plnnr. Two hooks definitely improve your situation, but please give some thought to changing your hanging method.
y’all have reproduced the argument I have with my husband: he reasons along plnnr’s lines and I am closer to gwendee (although neither of us knows what we’re talking about !)
Local picture framing store: good idea ! I will find one and ask them.
The frame isn’t nice, but it’s not particularly big, if that’s what you mean - there’s not much ‘frame’ around the ‘mirror’ to drill through without drilling through the glass itself.
Well, I was wondering if the frame was, for example, a really nice mahoganny, or if it was intricately carved or decorated. The reason I asked was that in my house, there is a large mirror (4’ x 6’) in a spare bedroom that was just bolted on. The frame is about 4 inches wide, nothing special as far as beauty of the wood or carvings go, and the glass is only in maybe 1/2" of the frame. Plenty of room to put 4 bolts into it and touch it up with putty and stain. It would never win any Martha Stewart awards, but it still looks nice and has been sturdily on that wall for at least 32 years without falling, cracking, or any bolts loosening.
