[Closed] Old Devon cottage walls ..problems with fixings /fasteners

You could try an undersized drill bit and then put a screw into the Rawl plug so you can hammer it in without damaging it, then unscrew the screw.

Or drill an oversized hole and pivot the drill so it's larger at the back, fill it with PU adhesive or similar and then push the Rawl plug in and let it set.

Final option could be to use metal banding screwed into the rear of the drawers and then to the floor/skirting, but it would have to be tight to prevent tipping. (I don't know if that would meet the requirements though)

If you don’t have any luck fixing the drawers to the wall I’d chamfer the back legs so it sits slightly lower at the back then fix the back of the rear legs to a wooden rail screwed across the width of several floorboards to spread the load if a child tried to climb up it.

Plasti plug uno browns drill the hole 20mm deeper than the plug glue them in with pu glue or 2 part epoxy wait for them to set then screw in.
Just make sure you blow the dust out of the hole.

Good ole wooden dowel also works if glue is used

Some great ideas...food for thought. Out of interest ..how would you get 2 part epoxy into the lower recesses of a overlength drilled hole ...with difficulty I'd imagine ! Probably a builders adhesive cartridge would be the way to go . I'd thought about wooden inserts glued in place ...I wonder how cupboards etc holding some Weight would be mounted to walls like these?

I make bedroom furniture. You're right to insist on the chest being made anti-tip. When I encounter poor walls I either screw the back of the piece down to a solid floor or, with a wardrobe or tall shelves, fit a concealed upright that would wedge against the ceiling if it were tipped. Old walls that might be made out of cobb or cow dung and hay will never give you peace of mind. They were only designed to hold the roof up, not to resist sideways forces.

The walls are probably cob: basically mud with some straw and manure thrown in (if you're lucky). There are plenty of discussions about fixings online, but most of the "solutions" offered seem to be little more than a guess. Worth a look though. Good luck......

The glues come as two parts in a syringe type application just drill, squirt, insert plug let it dry then fix use a wide thread screw to avoid stripped plugs.
https://www.toolstation.com/techfast-hex-masonry-torx-head-screw/p47315
Smaller version of those if you can use them and use a hand driver not a drill to screw them in

Screw the feet to the floor, try and hit a joist

Rawlbolts? Used for motorcycle ground anchors. Might work. Might make a bigger hole. (-:

There's a Rawlbolted anchor at my old house. They'll need a road drill to get that sucker out.

The walls are probably cob: basically mud

Yep, that is what my walls are (mud, bit of horse hair, bit of straw)
I keep putting anything on the wall at a minimum as every time you drill a hole where you want it to be it is pot luck on whether you will hit soft mud, a stone in the mud or get success.
All the pictures are held up with 3M hanging strips.

I would use bits of 100mm long x 20mm dowelling and Gorilla/PU adhesive and wood screws into the dowelling. Spray a bit of water into the holes, smear the glue onto the dowelling and the adhesive will foam/expand into any voids. Epoxy isn't really needed and isn't as good for filling voids.

I can't offer a fixing without knowing what the wall is made of, if it's old lime and crumbling it doesn't matter how strong the fixing because what is around it might be the weak point.

If you can get into something solid there are masonry rawl plugs, around 100mm long they come with a stainless steel screw already in, they fix into most walls, the length is important in that stone is not always consistent.
Epoxy fixings come ready to go, it's a tube with an epoxy pack inside, drill the hole, insert tube and give it a whack with a hammer to release the epoxy, then screw home, they are generally for serious anchors, my choice would be just a very long rawl plug, enough to not lever out.

I would use bits of 100mm long x 20mm dowelling and Gorilla/PU adhesive and wood screws into the dowelling. Spray a bit of water into the holes, smear the glue onto the dowelling and the adhesive will foam/expand into any voids. Epoxy isn’t really needed and isn’t as good for filling voids.

Sorry just saw this, this is the old way of fixing into stone, and still works, when you come across them in old houses they are murder to get out and they just hammered a bit of wood in and cut it flush.

Yeah but these were built in at the time of construction, bit late now! Try some chemical anchors from screwfix or the like.

Possibly run a batten around the room dado height, fixed to each of the upright battens in the wall, you'll need a beepy thing, ...stud finder, 😆 couldnt think there, to locate the battens. Then fix the brackets to the dado rail.
You could sink the rail into the plaster,which might reveal the studs.

some great answers/ options and all appreciated. Sometimes you can ask a question on STW and come away with top advice from knowledgeable folk ..like today . On the other hand there are days when you wished you'd never asked!
When I was a young lad and starting fixing my motorbikes the only option for help was to be cheeky enough to ring the local Motorcycle shop , get put through to the workshop and then have the front to question a mechanic who often had interrupted a complicated job to answer the phone!
Cheers all
Bill

Hanging pictures or anything on the wall is very much a late 19th/early 20th Century concept - a cottage like yours would be occupied by people who would be highly unlikely to have any sort of pictures or anything to hang anywhere, especially on that sort of wall! The concept of having personal pictures came later, Daguerreotypes were only developed, (if you’ll excuse the pun) in the 1850’s, Fox-Talbot’s negative process came later, and the sort of family living in a cob cottage would never have had the money to fritter away on anything like either of those extravagances, they might be lucky to have a couple of cheap paintings on a sideboard. Cob walls were never built to hang things on, only to keep the weather out and the roof up! Any personal pictures that someone might have been lucky enough to possess would be on a sideboard. I wouldn’t even consider trying to hang anything on a cob wall, brackets, pictures, whatever. Other items would be sat on a sideboard or an item of furniture with plate-racks or whatever.

Daguerreotypes were only developed,

[Life is Strange PTSD]

Hanging pictures or anything on the wall is very much a late 19th/early 20th Century concept

Good point, strip out the electric and give them the proper historical experience.

Epic thread reading fail by Dyna-Ti!

Though on balance, I'd rather live somewhere with cobb walling and deal with it, than stud walling!

Though on balance, I’d rather live somewhere with cobb walling and deal with it,

Which is why I have lived here for the last 20 years. Cob walls with lime plaster/render and thatch needing a lot more ongoing maintenance and a a much bigger pain than any modern house but I love the house.

Hanging pictures or anything on the wall is very much a late 19th/early 20th Century concept

Stone walls of my house, some of which dates back to 16th century, are littered with wooden and iron pegs driven in clearly to hang things on.

Beautiful house @Kerley 😁

Hanging pictures or anything on the wall is very much a late 19th/early 20th Century concept

For as long as there have been walls there have been pictures on them. Theres not really any period of human history where we haven't adorned our homes and our bodies in one way or another

Some friends were renovating an old cottage and intending to knock through a partition between two rooms where they figured a door must have one been. they were about to attack the wall from one side but changed their mind and started in the other room. If they hadn't done that they'd have unwittingly  smashed straight through the back of a 17th mural that was hidden in the void.

Cob walls were never built to hang things on, only to keep the weather out and the roof up! Any personal pictures that someone might have been lucky enough to possess would be on a sideboard.

The sideboard is what the OP is asking about 🙂

But anyway - for the OP - this is a fixing for the purpose of anchoring a piece of furniture so it doesn't rock forward.... Normally wall fixings aren't really gripping the wall that much - the load, like a picture or mirror is hanging downwards on the fixing and effectively holding the fixing by levering it against the sides of the hole. What you could try, given that you've already made some holes, is going into the same holes with longer fixing like a masonry screw - which will thread itself into the hole as you screw it in and have more friction with the material or a longer version of a rawlplug such as a hammer fixing - both versions work in a longer hole so there's more chance of finding something sound when you drill. The latter splays out at the end when installed and gives better protection against being pulled out. The latter is also tapped in with a hammer so there's no rotational force on the plug as you drive it in which will prevent the fixing trying to ream out the hole as you're finding with conventional wall plugs. Angle the holes you drill a bit - think of the way the fixing would be pulled if the furniture were to be tipped and angle the  fixing so that it would jamming against the hole rather than being pulled in a straight line. (Thinking about it a piece of furniture if tipped it would would mean the back edge is actually being lifted as it moves away from the wall so counterintuitively it helps to angle the hole upwards rather than downwards like a picture nail)

But just as I've typed all that......  if the room has a wooden floor (and not a precious one) what you could also do is get a couple of angle brackets and screw the back edge of the base of the furniture down the the floor - it'll do the same job of guarding against the furniture tipping forwards.

As many on this thread have said, sticking things into a wall made of mud only works until the mud crumbles which is why your first attempts failed.

Rather than screwing into the wall, can you glue a plank/panel of 12mm ply to the wall behind the chest of drawers and then fix onto that?

The idea is that because the plank has a large surface area glued to the wall, the load at any point is small. The wood can be painted the same colour as the wall so it is not obvious.

This is what we did in a house where we needed to mount some heavy floor to ceiling blinds across one end of the room and the only bit of wall we could screw into was the concrete lintle which appeared to be impregnated with diamonds judging by the drill bits it ruined. Put a 3m length of timber up with Gripfill and it was still there when we left.

If it's cob forget it. A strip of wood floor to ceiling attahced to the joists is the only way, scre the furniture and pictures to that. Make it a feature.

Tennon saw on the legs to make 2 x flat sections. Self tapper 2 x L brackets on to the flat sections 75mm x 75mm should suffice.
Then either fix the bracket to the floor, or the bracket to a batten. Then fix the batten to the floor , if access is a nightmare and the joists dont align
The joists wont align

Actually, if the bottom draw pops out do the same but engineer it internally, so the brackets project in to the room

Get a length of 4 x 1. Raise it 5mm off the floor. Fix the L shaped brackets so the slide under the 4 x 1. You can then mount the board into the floof joist
Can be done internally, ie pull L brackets to ward you then wedge a 2 x 2 behind
Or against the wall and insert under, then screw the front legs down using a long screw at an angle

You need some pattress plates on the outside with a bar going right through the wall. That way you'd need to pull the plate through the wall.

[i]You need some pattress plates on the outside with a bar going right through the wall. That way you’d need to pull the plate through the wall.[/i]

This might be overkill for the photos and paintings you want to hang 🙂

the L brackets on the back legs screwed to the floor was a good one, I'd go with that whatever the wall is made of, 4 screws, 2 mins, sorted.

Can you drill a large deep hole with the interior as rough as. Pump it full of resin /epoxy and slot in some threaded bar.

Most of them have ratings for use in fractured concrete / masonry so I'd imagine going deep would help with the adhesion / security.

I've put M24 bar into fractured concrete 150mm deep and it held a treat when pull tested. I can't remember what Hilti Hit resin it was though.

I've used Rawlplug R-KEM II Styrene-Free Polyester Resin 300ml ( successfully many times with no issues. I imagine you could get an eye but or hook to screw onto the threaded bar.

Epic thread reading fail by Dyna-Ti!

Though on balance, I’d rather live somewhere with cobb walling and deal with it, than stud walling!

Indeed, duffed that one.
As it was an old structure I thought it might be some sort of lath and plaster sort of thing, this style of wall building going back many hundreds of years. Many of the oldest houses in the Uk are constructed using studding.
The book I have on this subject 'Timber building in Britain by R.W.Brunskill' mainly deals with timber construction from the middle ages starting about the 5th century AD to the early 19th century. Studding is not something new and perhaps associated with modern building construction in a negative sense.
Sorry if I've caused any confusion there. oops 🙂

I love it when OP's leave out a key detail so that the answers are all over the place.

I love it when OP’s leave out a key detail so that the answers are all over the place.

I left it out because I haven't a clue tbh re wall construction although I do know cob . I don't think it was cob but certainly very loose and crumbly .
The advantage of not being too specific is that you get a plethora of answers and now I'm pretty much educated in all possibilities . Some great answers here ..a gold mine of info!