Daily Home Renovation Tips

There is this product by H. Paulin & Co. of Toronto, Canada called Anchoring Fasteners I need to tell you about.

In the past if I needed to hang something on a wall, it was a chore to try and find the stud into which I would drive a nail. Even with a stud finder gadget that have come out in the past few years, it was still a little hit-and-miss for me. And, of course, where I wanted to place the item (painting, ornament, etc.) on the wall was usually the spot that did not have a wall stud.

So, I would start with this ’search’ routine:

1. Search for the electric drill in the basement
2. Search for the drill bits, usually also in the basement
3. Search for the electric extension code for the electric drill because most of the time the wall outlet was too far just for the electric code that came with the 25 year old electric drill
4. Search for the screw in the size needed for the item to be hung on the wall
5. Search for the plastic wall anchor (also known as the ‘plug’) in the size needed for the screw
6. Search for the hammer needed to hammer the wall anchor
7. Search for the screw driver to fit the screw to go into the wall anchor 

Once all this material was located, then the procedure (highly summarized) was to install the drill bit in the drill, actually drill the hole in the wall, hammer in the wall plug, screw in the screw into the wall plug would occur. Oh, and then gather all of the stuff not left on the wall and bring it back to the basement.

Now, my search routine is much less. Items 1, 2 ,3 and 4 are no more. Items 4 and 5 from the above list has been replaced by searching for the Anchoring Fastener box. And, the procedure is now just hammer in the Anchoring Fastener and screw the screw within the Anchoring Fastener.

What H. Paulin & Co. have done is to manufacture a metal wall anchor which already contains the screw and a washer. All I need to do is to select the location  where I want to hang the object on the wall and then hammer the anchoring fastener into that location.

Next I then use the screw driver to turn the screw clockwise. That that does is to secure the anchor to the wall. Just like a plastic wall anchor which when the screw is inserted causes a part of the anchor to expand on the other side of the drywall, so does this product. When the screw is turned clockwise this causes the part of the anchor on the other side of the drywall to expand, thus securing it to the wall.

What does this product look like? Well in the picture below on the left is the (BEFORE) product out of the box and on the right is what it will look like AFTER the screw is turned clockwise several times if the product was not in the drywall.

Then, I remove the screw from the anchor counter clockwise, place it through the object I want to secure to the wall and then use the screw driver to place it back into the anchor. No fuse, no muse (as they say). Very simple. Less ’stuff’ to locate and use. And, what used to take me 30 minutes in locating all of the material, drill the hole, and so on, now takes me only around 5 minutes from start to end (including putting the materials back down the basement).

What do I also like about this? The packaging comes with all of the instructions that anyone, myself included, needs….with diagrams!

So, a tip of the cap to H. Pauline & Co. Limited from Toronto, Canada. This product is a winner in our books! Yes I do use it all the time and, no, we were not paid to endorse this product. If we are ever paid to comment on a product, we would tell you loud and clear.