My new to me house was built in 1921, and while parts of it have been extensively renovated, many of the walls on the main floor are original, ie. made with lattice and plaster, rather than drywall.
Now on one of these walls I’d like to hang a coatrack, but I really, really want to install this into studs. Only I can’t find 'em.
My studfinder is completely defeated. I suspect that not only is all the latticework confounding it, but the other side of the wall is a closet lined with cedar planking.
Does anyone have any ideas short of grabbing a finishing nail or putting a small bit in my drill and hoping for the best?
By lattice, do you mean the wooden lathe, or a metal mesh? If it’s wooden lathe, you can try using a Stanley 47-400 magnetic stud finder. It has a powerful magnet in the base, you slide it along the wall, when it gets near one of the nails that hold the lathe in place, the magnet is attracted and the yellow bar moves. It’s still sort of touch and go, I’d use a drill to be 100% sure.
FTR, you shouldn’t have any trouble using toggle bolts, I usually go with Toggler’s SnapToggle, which I find a lot easier to use than regular toggle bolts.
I agree with Cheesesteak - while ideally you’d like to anchor something heavy into a stud, it’s rare to find one in the right spot, if (in your case) you can find one at all. Rather than make myself crazy, I’d use toggle bolts. I’ve done so to mount coat racks laden with a family’s worth of winter coats without problems.
I assume you mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lath, although the wikipedia article references lattice as well. I wonder if the term lattice is used in some parts of the country and lath is used in others.
My suggestion is to be careful drilling into the plaster in case it gets crumbly. In my experience, the lath is pretty good at holding stuff and a few good toggle bolts will hold just about anything. The nice thing about lath is that it is attached the studs and I’ve used it to hold a small shelf on which I kept books.
I’ve never dealt with the metal kind so I have no idea how that would work.
I suppose it could be called lathe in other places. I’ve only heard it referred to as lattice, and I only know it’s lattice because I inadervertly madea hole in another wall and discovered it’s not gyprock.
Ugh. Won’t type more because the ‘reply’ window is only 3 characters wide. WTH?