Trying to install a curtain rod into a hard plaster wall can quickly turn into a disaster. The wall can break around the attaching hardware, ruining large portions of the finish, and when the curtain comes tumbling down, who knows what it will hit when it lands? There is a simple trick to installing the right hardware to support the weight of a curtain rod in a hard plaster wall, and it has less to do with knowing which hardware to choose than properly get it into the wall.
Instructions
1. Hold your curtain rod in the position you want to place it, using a level to make sure it is straight, and mark with a sharp pencil where your bolts need to be.
2. With a sharp box knife, cut a small cross into the plaster, centered over the pencil mark.
3. Place a nail at the center of the cross-cut and gently tap it through the surface of the plaster with a hammer. You are not trying to drive the nail through the plaster, just to break the finished surface and start a hole into the plaster itself.
4. Drill very slowly through the plaster using the hole you began. Use a bit size that is specified on the package of the lag bolt you have purchased. The drill bit size will match the width of the flat lag (a metal anchor that can turn to form a T on the bolt) and not the bolt itself.
5. Hold your lag bolt so the three parts of the system (lag, bolt and shielding sleeve) are lined up with the lag coming off the bolt as straight as possible and the shielding sleeve held snug to the bolt head.
6. Push the lag bolt into the hole. When you feel the lag drop free inside the wall, tap the head of the bolt gently with a hammer until the shielding sleeve in firmly seated in the wall.
7. Fit a box wrench to the top of the lag bolt and turn it clockwise until you feel the lag drawn tight to the wall, and then you are ready to move on to the next one.
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