Making a wooden bracket to hold a closet pole--questions

13 years ago

My son's closet is only 20" wide. Usually in closets in older homes, I see 1x3's nailed at pole height around the inside of the closet, and then pole hanging cups are screwed to this wood.

If I do this, I'll lose almost 10% of my available hanging width.

What I'm thinking is, to rotozip some of the plaster out, mount the wood directly to studs, feather in the edges with compound, and paint it all the wall color, since the wood would be inserted flush to the walls anyway. Also, instead of screwing the cup hardware to the wood inserts, I'd drill out a hole at each end to recieve the pole. The hole on one end would get a mortised sliding entry ramp at the top, so you'd fit the pole into one end, then angle slide it into the other cupped hole.

Is there a better way, or am I on the right track here?

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Comments (3)

aidan_m
13 years ago
Have you had the plaster tested for asbestos?

I wouldn't use a rotozip on anything, let alone old plaster. We have one in the tool cabinet in the shop that hasn't been taken out in about 10 years, since we bought it.

Plaster is very strong; much stronger than gypsum board, which is also quite strong. You don't need to find studs if you are using the right anchors.

Use toggle bolts. Fasten the pole sockets directly to the wall. They will only require a 1/2" hole drilled through the plaster. Hilti makes the best toggler's I've ever used. We just recieved 7 cases of 1,000. That will last a couple of months at our rate of use.

We use togglers to hang heavy duty hardward on hollow walls. Never had a problem with several thousand installs. Desk tops, Big screen TV's, even closet pole. We use these things daily.

Your kid will be able to use the closet pole as a chin-up bar; those togglers are so darn strong in plaster.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hilti Toggler
slateberry
Original Author
13 years ago
Ok I'm sold on the hilti's, thanks! It's a good thing you mentioned the pullups, because until I read that line, I was thinking, forget it, maybe they can take a static load, but we have a bouncy monkey in the equation, and there's no way it can take that. But after reading your full description I'm ready to give it a try.

Also, I forgot when we added a linen closet (long story), ds's closet got sheetrocked, so it's not plaster any more. And no, the linen closet did not steal width, only depth, of which he has plenty to spare. And the sheetrock did not go over plaster (otherwise I'd be taking it out to gain width back.) So anyway, I was picturing plaster and lath in my mind, because that's 99% what I've got in this house, but really it will be sheetrock.

Thank you again, SO MUCH, for the suggestion. I was not looking forward to the mess of cutting into the wall extensively.

(and if any of my old house forum friends are reading, the plaster-to-sheetrock thing happened back in the day when I was a newbie--I know better now :-).
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slateberry
Original Author
12 years ago
Update:

This project got back-burnered for a while as we were squeaking by using a small tension curtain rod (unbelievable it worked, size 5 kids clothes just aren't that heavy). Anyway, ds finally got old enough to realize that my temporary rod was lame, and asked for a real one. So i finally installed the real rod. I had the hilti's all ready to go, and suddenly thought, "wait, what if there's a stud right where I'm going with this". So I checked. And there are studs right where I want to put the pole brackets. Unbelievable.

I've always known about measure twice, cut once. I'd like to add:

Check for studs BEFORE you worry about what you'll do if you don't find one.

to the repository of carpentry wisdom.

But hey, I'm so glad to know about the Hiltis, even if I didn't need them this time. If you're out there aidan_m, THANKS!