I have been given the task of hanging a shelf in the laundry room. So I went out onto the interwebs to study techniques for finding the studs in the walls. I have to screw the shelf supports into the studs so that the shelf won’t fall down. I found some videos that describe the following foolproof technique for finding studs in walls.
I went to the local Big Box Home Improvement store, and found these super magnets.
Those babies set me back about $3.98. These magnets will stick to anything with iron or steel in it, even when they are still in the package. When I got them home, they were stuck to the other stuff in the bag, and it took me a while to separate the various pieces parts. You don’t want to fool around with these, they will fly toward anything with iron in it, and they will shatter when they hit.
I opened the package and finally pried the magnets apart (they stick to each other quite well too). Then I took some tape that I found upstairs.
I cut off about three inches of the tape.
Then, I stuck one of those magnets right in the middle of that piece of tape.
I wrapped the tape over the top of the magnet, and stuck the ends together, and voilà, a magnet with a convenient handle.
I made three of those, then I took them to the laundry room and simply moved them over the wall in a somewhat random pattern…..
When I moved the magnet over a place where a drywall screw is holding the drywall to the stud, the magnet stuck to the wall. Like this
And there are the studs! Pretty cool, hunh?
Well OK, I did cheat a little bit because I had this picture from when the house was being built.
So I knew ahead of time where the studs are. But even so, I think my little home made stud finder worked pretty well.
