Anchors away
By not paying attention to something I’ve talked about for years, I managed to put a nice, jagged hole in the wall of our laundry room
I’m a big proponent of anchoring tall furniture and cabinetry for the sake of safety, especially for children. In fact, I devoted a blog to the subject last year, and again just two months ago.
That’s why what I’m about to tell you is more embarrassing than I’d like to admit. By not paying attention to something I’ve talked about for years — something I believe strongly — I managed to put a nice, jagged hole in the wall of our laundry room.
When we moved into our home, the previous owner had left a small utility cabinet in the laundry room. Nothing fancy, about 5’ high and 2’ wide, it’s the ready-to-assemble kind you can find in any big box store. Upon moving in, we filled that cabinet up and used the top to store whatever didn’t fit the shelf’s height.
That was nine years ago. Flash forward to last week when I wanted to move it down a bit to fill up some wasted space. (You can’t quite tell from the photo, but there’s about a 5" gap on the left side of the cabinet.) Easy-peasy; the cabinet was small enough I didn’t bother to empty it. I just thought I’d lean against it and snug it up into that corner.
It wouldn’t budge. After trying a couple times, I noticed that a seam of the laminate flooring was aligned with the left edge of the cabinet at the bottom. OK, methinks, it’s hanging up on that seam, and I figured I’d pull it out at a slight angle to get it off that seam and then shove it over. Again, wouldn’t budge.
So, I gave the stupid thing a bear hug and pulled, at which point the more prescient of you will know exactly what happened. It ripped loose from a wall anchor I hadn’t seen, pulled suddenly forward, knocked everything off the top, and ripped a hole in the wall when the anchor pulled free.
On the downside I must have looked like a knucklehead tugging away on that cabinet and am now rewarded by needing to repair that drywall. On the other hand, this illustrates perfectly just how strong tip-preventing wall anchors can be. And the fact that they work as they’re supposed to.
A.J. Hamler is the former editor of Woodshop News and Woodcraft Magazine. He's currently a freelance woodworking writer/editor, which is another way of stating self-employed. When he's not writing or in the shop, he enjoys science fiction, gourmet cooking and Civil War reenacting, but not at the same time.
