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a home + living guide for the post-college, pre-parenthood, quasi-adult generation

01.07.2002

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now showing how to make gallery-style metal tracks to hang your artwork | 1 2 3
continued from page 1

installing the wall tracks
1. Cut the track to fit your space, if necessary. (Tin snips serve just fine for this purpose.) Remember, there’s no need to mount the track flush to the edges of the walls, since chances are pretty much nil that you’d be hanging your artwork that snugly to the edges anyway.
2. If you’re happy with the silver color, fantastic! Skip on to step 3 … On the other hand, if you’d like your track to blend into the walls, you’ll need to do some painting now. Spraypainting will be the fastest, easiest method – just make sure you raise the track up off the ground (stick a couple of bricks, tile, whatever, underneath) and protect the area with plenty of newspaper, or a large dropcloth. Give it several coats (with white spraypaint, I find it generally needs at least three or four).
3. Now it’s time to determine how high to mount that track. I like to place tracks as close to the ceiling as possible, to make them less conspicuous, but the choice is up to you – you could certainly position them lower if you’re vertically-challenged and don’t want to go to the bother of dragging out a ladder every time you need to change the artwork. Two things to keep in mind: (1) the track should obviously be positioned higher than the tops of whatever artwork you’ll eventually hang, and (2) leave an inch or so above the track so you’re not bonking your knuckles against the ceiling when it’s time to hang or move a picture.
4. Still holding that track in position? Good. You’ll notice that there are little holes distributed all over the track – choose one hole each about 3"-6" in from both ends (closer to 3" for shorter tracks, towards 6" for longer tracks), plus a third hole in the center; mark the positions of all three holes with a pencil. (Note, as mentioned in the materials section, mark extra holes if you’re planning to hang heavy artwork and want extra screws for greater support).
5. Arms tired? Set the track aside for now. Drill a hole at each pencil mark (make sure to use a drill bit that’s an appropriate size for your plastic anchors/screws. If you’re using anchors, use the drill bit suggested on the anchor package.)
6. Gently hammer in the anchors, if you’re using them.
7. Hoist the track back up into place again. Line it up with the holes you’ve drilled/ the anchors you’ve hammered in. Get a friend to help hold up the runner for you while you screw it into place.

don't stop: you still have to hang those pictures!

 

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