Keeping stuff from sticking to the wall

[jtara92101]

I'm sure many of you have had that awful feeling. You installed a TV bracket and did the job right - you had your own (or borrowed) child do pull-ups on it, and then swing around the room on it a few times for good measure. Job well done! And then you mounted a few other things on the wall, a power strip, some shelves. All done right - ain't going nowhere!

 

Years pass...

 

You don't like where you put it any more, or it's time to move.

 

Time to take the stuff down and patch the holes. No big deal, some tapered wood plugs, a bit of patching compound, this'll be easy. 

 

But first, to unbolt it and... what's this... the &^%$# thing is still stuck to the wall! Just a little tug... RIIIIIIP! 

 

And now you have a huge patch job, as the drywall paper has come away with the bracket.

 

MAYBE it happened only because you mounted the stuff soon after painting. Of course, that's the most common time when stuff is mounted on walls! But I have a hunch this happens anyway, no matter how long the paint has dried. 

 

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What can be done to prevent this? I did some looking around, and asked my Material Scientist friend. I asked him about teflon, would it work, and can I get it with a sticky back. He said yes, he's used it in his work, so knew it exists in sticky-backed sheets. I poked around, and it's EXPENSIVE. So, I poke around a bit more. And I finally realized that a sheet would be wasteful (I was going to trim with a x-acto) and it would be less expensive and easier to do in the form of a tape. And then I found this:

 

UHMWPE is odorless, tasteless, and nontoxic.^[3] It is highly resistant to corrosive chemicals except oxidizing acids; has extremely low moisture absorption and a very low coefficient of friction; is self-lubricating (see boundary lubrication); and is highly resistant to abrasion, in some forms being 15 times more resistant to abrasion than carbon steel. Its coefficient of friction is significantly lower than that of nylon and acetal, and is comparable to that of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, Teflon), but UHMWPE has better abrasion resistance than PTFE.

 

 

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-molecular-weight_polyethylene

 

I asked my friend, and he said, yes, this will work as well, and probably even better than teflon for the job.

 

But it's still fairly expensive, though not as much as Teflon!

 

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=uhmw+tape&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Auhmw+tape

 

Anyone here think ahead and did some kind of special preparation to keep the bracket/power strip/shelves from sticking to the wall? If so, what did you use, and how did it turn out?

 

If you haven't still interested in suggestions. Saran wrap? Waxed paper? (I'd hate for it to backfire, and then have to scrape melted saran wrap off of the wall, and have wax constantly oozing down the wall below the bracket!) Other common household products?

[larryllix]

Latex takes six weeks to cure and then it shouldn't happen. People think because it dries in an hour the latex base has cured and stable. Wrong!

 

I have a guitar case that sticks to latex painted wall, years later for some stupid reason.

 

Try some wax paper, not parchment, the stuff with actual wax in it, if it hasn't been outlawed yet.

 

Maybe some 3M invisible tape in between. It doesn't stick to anything.

 

Happy Festivus, George!

[stusviews]

Waxed paper

[Teken]

I have always just used high quality painters tape and applied it to the hardware with the backing facing the wall. I'm not sure what's used in the blue vs the purple tape but one doesn't seem to transfer the color pigment over the course of years. If you go cheap and buy the green stuff from the Dollar Store, Buck or $2, Dollar Rama, etc.

 

You're just asking for trouble . . .

[jtara92101]

I was having trouble findingthe UHMWPE tape at reasonable prices and in the sizes I wanted. The usual Amazon/eBay sources weren't really giving me much choice.

 

As it happens, I also needed an assortment of different-length spacers to mount the TV bracket and shelving unit to the wall. I had a hunch that McMaster-Carr would be the place for those.

 

(It's complicated! Concrete support column/small air gap/"chicken wire", wet plaster, drywall...  I did not want to crush the drywall/plaster. I used flanged/drop-in concrete anchors, but each one wound up being a variable distance back from the drywall surface. So, I had to select different length spacers and 1/4" bolts. Thank goodness for my buddy down the street with the Rotary Hammer, which worked "like butter".)

 

So, while I was shopping for spacers, I thought I'd see if they sell the tape - and they do!

 

I wound up getting a couple of 5-yard rolls of the thinnest tape in 2" width, and a 1'x2' piece of film. I used the film on the back of the TV wall mount which is about that size with odd cutouts, then cut away the excess with an x-acto knife. I used the tape on the back of the shelving frame, which is a "skeleton" of angle stock. I have plenty of tape left for other projects - nothing goes on the wall from here on out without this tape on the back!

 

FYI:

 

    https://www.mcmaster.com/#surface-protection-tape/=15zf6g9

 

    https://www.mcmaster.com/#uhmw-polyethylene-sheets/=15zf7bp

 

And, should you happen to need spacers - they've got spacers!

 

    https://www.mcmaster.com/#unthreaded-spacers/=15zf7r8

 

I love McMaster-Carr! They have every bit of hardware you can imagine, in endless variation. And, generally, it shows up on your doorstep the next day.

 

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So, this is probably overkill - I'd guess 3M clear packaging tape would do. (Though might be more difficult to remove from back of fixtures later.) My concern with any of the painters tapes would be color transfer and/or migration of the adhesive through the tape surface over time. And that stuff does get pretty nasty and brittle over time.

 

This stuff - ain't nuthin' gonna stick. (In a thicker form) they use it to line conveyers and dump-truck beds!