Jun 11, 2002 6 min read

It looked so simple. Anybody can hang a picture, right? Then it stands to reason anyone who can hang a picture on a wall should also be able to hang a mirror on a wall, right?

Wrong. Especially if that person is me.

We have been searching for some time for a picture that suited a large bare space on the wall above the loveseat in our living room. It is a substantial space, an area open for something of two-dimensional girth. At first, we decided we would get just one picture, massive enough to fill that big blank. We also discussed making an arrangement of several smaller pictures.

My lovely wife shopped around and found one image, a Victorian scene of a family obviously having a picnic on a spring day. She purchased it and I hung it.

But in order to hang it I had to use math skills, a tape measure, hammer and some special hooks that would bear its weight.

The hanging hooks on the rear of the frame were spaced one on each side, which meant any hanging contrivance I put on the wall had to match. It’s easy to hang a picture when all you have to do is put one hook on the wall. There’s not much measuring. In fact, you can eyeball about where it should be placed.

Two hooks meant I had to be more careful. I had to first hold the picture to the wall, let my wife determine its general height, check to see how far down on the frame its hanging attachments were, measure that to the height my wife had just decreed, measure the distance between them and install the bearing hooks on the wall.

It doesn’t even sound simple.

But I did it. I had a bit of a time getting the hooks on the frame and wall to match up. And, after much perspiration and huffing and puffing, voila – the picture was mounted on the wall.

“It’s too high,’ my wife declared.

“No it isn’t,’ I countered. “It’s a big picture. It has to be that high.’ There was no way I was going to go through that process all over again.

Well, some weeks later she decided that picture wasn’t suitable so she returned it to the store.

We found another, more suitable one, which, wonderfully, required just one hook to hang. Of course I also put it too high, but that’s a problem that can be easily rectified.

However, my wife also planned to replace the vanity mirror in her bathroom. Rather, I should say she decided what reflective edifice she wanted to replace the old-fashioned mirror/medicine chest and I would do the labor.

I waited to tackle this job when she wasn’t home. Why? I know I took a chance by doing it when she wasn’t home as far as the placement of the mirror was concerned. The real reason was I had examined how the old medicine cabinet/mirror combo had been installed. Four screws held it in place. The problem was they were like no screws I had ever seen before. They didn’t have slotted heads. They didn’t have Philips heads (you know, the kind that looks like a plus sign) and they didn’t have the more modern variety that would require an Allen wrench. The heads had an almost oblong type of hole looking very suspiciously like they would require some rare tool for removal.

I didn’t have such a tool on hand so I had to improvise. I managed to turn them out enough with a flat screwdriver until I could get a vise grip clamped onto them. For those who don’t know what a vise grip is it’s much like duct tape – the handyman’s special one tool that does nearly every job. Not well, mind you. But it gets the job done. It’s like a large pair of pliers that you can adjust tightly and then lock onto whatever it is you want to grasp.

I turned the grip for what seemed like hours until the first screw came free. It had to be a foot long (yes, I’m using a little hyperbole here. I measured it. It was 2.5 inches). It took the better part of an hour to work the four screws free.

Then it was time to install the new mirror. I should have known I was in trouble when I couldn’t get it out of the box. I had to cut the container away from the mirror. I found an instruction sheet. One for dummies, I suppose, because all it carried were line drawings of how to install the mounting screws the mirror would hang upon. No words. Just pictures.

But I couldn’t find the items shown in the pictures. The mounting brackets were inset into the rear of the mirror frame. But there were no screws in the box. (I later found the thumb-sized wadded package containing them after I threw the empty box down the stairs in a fit of temper. By then I had already hung the mirror).

One more major snag: the mounting brackets were on either side of the rear of the mirror frame. That called for measuring the distance between the two as well as measuring the center of the area where the mirror would hang.

I gathered up my tools, tape measure and an assortment of screws. I drilled one set of holes that didn’t work; then I drilled a second set that didn’t work; and then, after measuring, I learned the mounting brackets on the mirror were not even. One was lower than the other one. So I drilled a third set of holes. This time it worked.

In between all this drilling I had to juggle the heavy mirror back and forth, blindly trying to get the mounting brackets and the screws to match.

By the time I completed this project I had soaked my shirt with perspiration and huffed and puffed enough to blow down the brick house from the Three Little Pigs.

I wasn’t very proud of my work. Just tired, irritated and exhausted. And, as I write this, my wife has yet to see the finished product. One thing I can guarantee. It will not be too high.

Have a good day.

Jim Pletcher is the Herald-Standard’s business editor. E-mail: jpletcher@heraldstandard.com.