Part 2 - Pro Method for Hanging Pictures and Art

When it comes time to hang artwork in your home, do you cringe? Well, I used to, but not anymore. Stay tuned and I'll show you some secrets how to do the job quickly and easily. Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. There's a few secrets to hanging artwork correctly the first time, so it's where you want it to be secure and level. First of all, avoid using only one hanger if at all possible. Always use at least two. Unless, of course, you like your artwork to move around every time someone slams the door hard or someone bumps the wall. This is part two of a two-part series. In the first part, we showed you how to hang fixed-point items that use sawtooth hangers, D-rings, slots, and so forth. Stay tuned to the end of this episode. We'll show you how you can do that first one. So right now, let's get to how to hang artwork that uses wire mounting. Well, Dirt Farmer Maggie and I are Airbnb hosts, and we've just passed the Christmas season. And one of our sons and his family gave us the very thoughtful gift of a world map that will allow our guests to mark where they are from. And we get people from all over the world. So as you can see, this is a wire-mounted type of piece of artwork. And to hang this on the wall, the first step we need to do is determine where we want the actual piece to end up. Well, when we placed it on the wall here and kind of centered it around, we determined that we wanted the top edge to be right there. All right, the next thing you need to do is determine how far apart you're going to put the screws in the wall. So we've decided that we're going to put them right at 24 inches, and that's approximately there. Notice that I don't put them way out to the edges. That's hard on this and it's not as stable. I recommend that the edges of the screws be somewhere four to six inches from here to here. So we're going to go ahead and do 24 inches. Okay, the next step then is to take a piece of wood and put screws in it the distance that you decide you're going to put this far apart. In this case, it's 24. Now, what we did is we put a center mark on this stick and we went 12 inches out this way and 12 inches out that way, so it's centered. And we also put a mark right on the top center of the piece of artwork. You can see it right there. We did it in silver and that allows us to line this right up. Now, I messed with you just a little bit because this is really a little bit of a jig that I made that's got a handle on it. You can use just a straight stick if you need to. I'll show you how to make this jig in another episode. But notice what's happened now. We have the heads of the screws towards the wire and I can simply take this, hook it under the wire on each side like that. We can adjust this left and right until this center line is right in line with the mark on the top center of the frame. So, when I pick this up, that is exactly how high the wire is going to come up. And if I turn this around now, I can mark right on the jig how far up the frame goes. Now, let's go ahead and measure that. Now, what we need to do is measure the distance from the top of where the frame is down to the line where the screws are going to be. Okay, this right here is the mark that's the top of the picture frame. Using the five and a quarter inch dimension we just determined, we're going to come down five and a quarter inches and put another mark. That represents the line in which the screws are going to be mounted out here and will allow the picture to land at the area we want it to. We'll need to extend the line off that lower point now. So, we're going to go ahead and put that under there. And we need to extend left and right of the rough center far enough that we can grab those screws, but short enough that it's still hidden behind the print. Okay, that gives us the height above finish floor that we're going to put our mounting screws. But it does nothing to tell us about left to right here. And here's a secret on hanging pictures. Forget about trying to measure the edges and split differences. Simply go to the center, hang the center of the picture on the center line, and the edges will take care of themselves. So, let's measure this distance from the corner to the edge of the window that we want to center in. It's 50 inches. So, we're going to go right back here to 25 inches. And you can see that was pretty close to just my approximate center. That mark right there is halfway from the corner and halfway out to the window. Now, remember that what we chose was a 24 inch distance between the screws. Easy math. 12 inches to the left of this mark, 12 inches to the right. Let's make it happen. Let's go ahead and double check and make sure that we're correct here. As you can see, it's 24 inches. Exactly the distance that we chose on our jig. All right, let's go ahead and drive these screws. Now, if you have a really heavy piece of artwork, you may have to use some wall anchors and the appropriately sized or rated screws to do this. But this is a moderate weight. So, we're just going to use coarse thread drywall screws and just mount them in those marks that we did. So, again, we drive slowly. And if I hit a stud, that's fine with me. I'm just going to leave it far enough out that the wire can come right behind it. We'll move over to this side here. Do the same thing. Again, I like screws because they're very precise. You're not bouncing things around. And now we have our two attachment points. Well, proof is in the pudding. When we hang it up, will it land where we said it would? And will it be level, straight and secure? Let's take a look. Okay, let's see how we did. If it's going to end up where we hoped it would. Let's go ahead and get those wires to hang onto those two screws. There we go. It hung there. Let's adjust left and right. I'll get a tape measure. Let's just double check here. We're about five and a quarter, five and five sixteenths. That is perfect. We nailed it just by eyesight. So, it's hanging here. Now, notice that it's hanging on the wires. But whenever I let it go, it always comes back to where it was. So, it's not going sideways because it's hanging on two points. So, we have two other acid tests here. One, is it level? And number two, did we hit where we said we wanted to above finish four? Well, let's take a look. Well, see for yourself. Beautiful, huh? And did we hit the height we wanted? Well, you judge for yourself. How about that right there? There's our mark. There's the top edge. Perfect. And there you have it. That is how you hang a wire mounted piece of artwork or decor. However, if you have a fixed point type of mounting system on your artwork or decor, something that uses a d-ring, a sawtooth hanger, or a slot, then be sure to watch episode one. You can visit the link below in our description, or you can stick around for a few more seconds and click on the video end card at the end of this episode. Also, if you want to learn how to make this jig that I used to hang this piece of artwork, I'll show you step-by-step how I did it. And you can visit that link also down in the description below. Well, if you found this video to be helpful, won't you like it? And better yet, if you've not subscribed yet, would you do so? We sure appreciate it. Until the next time, this is Dirt Farmer Jay from DirtFarmerJay.com.