I grew up pretty much smack dab on the middle of the Canadian Shield, one of the more seismically stable places on the planet. Now that I live in San Francisco, I’m basically always thinking about how to survive an earthquake. When I went to hang some pictures, this ended up being a major research project, so for all my Canadian friends in the Bay Area or just other paranoid types, here’s what you need to have pictures hung as well as these:
1) OOK Tremor Hangers – these babies have a clip to keep your cable from jumping out of the hook, and come with OOK’s excellent hardened picture-hanging nails. The kit I linked to is the best deal for a bunch of them; if you need fewer, check out Home Depot. One alternative which some friends speak highly of but which I haven’t tried are the Quakehold “maze” style hangers – these might be easier to find at your hardware store, too.
2) Quakehold Putty – it’s like the blue sticky tacky stuff used to put posters up in camp and university dorms, except it doesn’t stain everything that nasty greasy blue. There’s even a clear version for sticking glassware to shelves etc.
3) 3M Picture Hanging Strips – I could write a whole blog post about how much I freaking love 3M Command Adhesive stuff. It’s the best. The picture strips are this weird velcro-like stuff that is great for hanging lightweight stuff on its own, or also are great at stabilizing and load-balancing in conjunction with the OOK hangers.
Those will do you right for drywall walls. If you’re a renter and nervous about your landlord noticing your hasty post-move-out spackle job, I highly recommend the 3M Sticky Nails. They don’t have clips like the OOKs, but if you’ve got quake putty and the hanging strips you’ll be alright up to a point. There’s a version for sawtooth type picture frames (which I hate), or wire-backed.
I had one concrete wall at my first SF apartment (the one that jacked up my rent by $500/mo when the lease was up for renewal… needless to say I don’t live there any more) and this taught me the joys of hard wall hangers. These are plastic hooks with small nails embedded in them, which will get just enough grip on a concrete wall to hold up a pretty large picture. I was nervous about the cable “jumping” out of the anchor, so I fashioned a complicated arrangement where I sandwiched the cable between the anchor hook on the bottom and a 3M Command “sticky nail” on top to keep the wire from jumping. And earthquake putty on both the anchor hook itself as well as a couple places on the frame. And 3M picture strips on the sides. This was a real belt and suspenders kinda operation…
Which is good, because four days after I finished hanging those pictures, there was a minor earthquake. All of my stuff stayed securely on my walls. Victory!
I’ve linked to products on Amazon, but Home Depot carries all of these as well, and the Container Store has quake putty and the full assortment of 3M Command delights. Cole Fox, which is a wonderful local hardware chain in SF, carries putty, 3M stuff, and hard wall hangers, the “maze” hangers, and some safety/tremor hangers that look similar to the OOK ones.
Happy picture hanging!
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