sigh No jokes about “looking for a stud”. 
wonders exactly which kind of “stud” jokes the veternarian was looking for
There’s just so many options here. Too many. I shall leave it to my betters.
I was wondering how long we’d, uh, keep it up. 
Of course, you could get lucky and have solid concrete walls. 
To hang pictures, I just bored holes and inserted those plastic expandy filler things that receive the screws.
or you could always splurge the $10 and get a stud finder
Or you could spend $250 on this stud finder.
(Happy, vetbridge?)
I tried one of those things. It didn’t do a thing. I guess I’m destined to be lonely.
It could be worse. Last time I went to Home Depot, the damn things kept going off whenever I walked by. 
Thanks, y’all!
I’ve never tried it, but an electric razor is supposed to make a good stud finder. As you run it along the wall, the sound changes depending whether you’re over a stud or empty space. (Note that you don’t need to use the cutter side for this - the back of it vibrates just fine.)
For plaster walls, if you’re going to be hanging a lot of stuff consider putting up picture rail molding. It’s a molding that you put up near the ceiling and then hang your stuff from picture rail hooks from the molding (it’s rounded on top to fit the hooks). My older home (1928) came with it in most of the rooms and it’s a real godsend - you can hang stuff and not worry about moving it around and ruining the plaster. Move pictures until you like them, etc.
When we had a huge picture to hang, I went to the hardware store and bought a box of heavy duty “WallBiter” picture hangers, which unfortunately I’ve not been able to find a picture of on the web. They’re hooked, just like regular nail-and-hook style picture hooks, but they’re one piece of solid metal. The front is the hook, and on the wall side there are two “teeth”: a tiny downward-hooking tooth at the bottom, and a really fat wicked-looking curved “claw” near the top. You pick your location and poke the bottom tooth into the wall, then you lever the upper claw back into the wall, hammering if necessary.
Man, them suckers is tough. I reckon two of them could hold eighty pounds easily. And, you can remove them without leaving a visible anchor in your wall.
Well, first, do not try to hang a heavy object with only drywall anchors, because you will eventually hire me as a remodeling contractor to come over and fix where the mirror/etc fell off the wall, and maybe cracked a few tiles on your nice ceramic tile floor.
And Johanna. while your method of finding studs sometimes works in older houses that have shifted and such, your method will not show where studs are after a competent drywall/texture person has finished a wall, as drywall sheets come in 8 and 12 foot lengths. There is not a “low relief of the studs” :rolleyes: unless the framers used bowed/crooked studs to begin with.
All I know is, it works in my house, which is 20 years old. Is that considered “old”? (I overheard a conversation at work yesterday about real estate; they seem to think that any house older than 5 years is old.)
Are there any other kind these days?
Last time I bought a few 2x4’s I went through maybe 30 in order
to find two that were straight.
Right, and my observation is that builders buy them by the bundle and use them all regardless.
Zyada and I are doing that for our den. The carpenter we talked to suggested it would look best at the same level as the tops of the doors. (Is that a good idea? Zsofia, where’s yours?) It seems to us that monofilament fishing line would hold a picture and be inconspicuous at least, if not invisible.
Some do, but there are those of us who will send back all of the slop in a skid of lumber and let the yard know that we’re not building boats, e.g. send good stuff or we’ll find a new vendor.