I need to be able to put up strips of moulding to divide a wall, for a mural project. The wall is concrete, very hard, and usually chips if you put a nail in, so normally I hang pictures with those plastic “bulldog” hooks with 3-4 wire brads in them. I’m thinking finishing nails will just bend when they hit the concrete.
Anyway, here are the tricky bits:
It’s temporary (6 mos. to 5 years). I have to be able to remove the moulding without much damage when we move out (at which point I’m ok with plastering and painting in spots if needed). I don’t know how removable this will be if I use construction adhesive.
I thought about double-sided foam tape, but that’s hard to get off walls, plus one piece of moulding (the best I could find) is slightly warped so if one end is flat on the wall, the other pulls away from the wall a bit; I’m afraid that with tape it will eventually separate, especially given the humidity here. Or should I try steaming the wood and bending it back slowly the other way to get it straight?
I guess I could drill through the wood, countersink, and put in a plastic sleeve anchor for each screw into the concrete wall, screw it all in place, putty the holes up, spot stain the putty (the moulding’s already stained), and then rip it all off in a couple years and repair the holes and paint over. But that seems like a lot of damage and trouble.
Any better ideas? I’ve never attached moulding to a concrete wall before. Oh, and it will be within reach of a toddler’s paws after a year or two, so it needs to be held on pretty well.
Try tile cement, the stuff used to fix the tiles to the wall in the bathroom.
It’s somewhat brittle when dry, so in places you may be able to chip it off with a stiff scraper. But there will be areas where you have to abrade it off. It’s not too hard though.
If the wood is bent, you’ll have trouble getting it to stay in position while the cement sets. Probably have to drill into the wall at each end to keep it from bending at first, but you can remove them once everything is fixed in place.
At the Carrefour and B&Q they have these batheroom shelves that you stick to the wall with an included adhesieve strip (I think they are made by 3M). You can buy these strips speparately. They hold very well and are very easy to remove. Using them creatively may give good results. One possible problem is that they may be too thick.
It depends how warped the moulding is. If you need to straighten it when you install it, I think nails or anchors is the only way. But if the moulding is only warped a bit and it can be installed as is, I would try a hot glue gun. It should be strong enough and easy enough to scrape off the wall later. It would definitely work if you had a straight moulding.
Well you’re in the right culture if you want to manage a temporary chabudou job of it. Or do you want to do it prpoerly?
You’re right. That is the more troublesome way.
Only screwing into the wall is going to provide a stable and secure finish. You will likely need to prepare some filler or silicon to fill in any gaps between the wood and the wall as the wall’s plaster will unlikely be completely even and flat. This is a reason why double sided sticking adhesive doesn’t often work well.
You should of course measure carefully when drawing your tracer line onto the wall beore you begin with drilling and fixing your wood. If you are measuring the height from the floor or the drop from the ceiling, then make certain that your floor or ceiling, i.e. point of reference is actually level to begin with. The majority of floors and ceilings in Taiwan at least are hardly level at all and if you use them as a reference point at every short interval then you will end up with a wonky wood trim line all the way down the wall. If it were me I would likely measure up each end of the wall from the floor to the height I was aiming for and then stretch a piece of string from one end to the other as long as it can’t sag in the middle, and use that as my guide line.
By the way, if you happen to find a countersink for wood, then please let me know where you got it.
Gman, a double-sided foam tape was my first thought, but that’ll create a small gap at the edge, just enough to let little fingers get a purchase on it and pull it off, I think. Double-sided tape also failed to hold some things on our walls before.
It’s temporary, so it doesn’t have to be perfect, but I’d like it to look nice and hold up for up to 5 years if possible, without falling off.
Hmm, good idea. I think I’ll get the silicon out. Thanks for the tracer line advice, too. You’re right, this apartment isn’t built square.
As for the warping, it’s not too bad – I couldn’t see it when I bought it. Across a length of 1.5 meters, if you hold one end flat to the wall, the other end pops away from the wall a centimeter or more. Could be the wall isn’t straight, frankly. I was just worried that constant tension from that would pull it away if a weak adhesive is used, especially with the humidity we have here.
I was just worried that constant tension from that would pull it away if a weak adhesive is used, especially with the humidity we have here.