Boy Problems

Not just any boys.  Studs, in particular. 

You know what I mean - strong, sturdy, supportive.... 

Okay, I'm talking about the wooden studs in the frame of my house.  Not actually guys at all.  But it got your attention, right?

Over the summer, I have been gradually painting every single wall in my house.  The most recent canvas was my master bathroom.  Wanting to be thorough, I decided to take down the medicine cabinet that was hung up (as in, not built directly into the wall) to paint behind it.  I also had some issues with the previous toilet paper dispenser.  One side of it came loose and I could not for the life of me figure out how to reattach it to the wall.  I ended up pulling it out completely.  Lo, and behold: I pulled out the wall anchors too!  I was immediately puzzled.  Who puts wall anchors in to hold up a toilet paper dispenser?  Is there really that much of a weight issue?  Are people wiping with special grade, lead toilet tissue, and I didn't get the memo?  

Either way, this created some prominent holes in the wall.  Even more fun was that the anchor ripped right out of the left side, but was significantly more challenging to remove from the right side.  Same thing with the medicine cabinet.  This should've been my first clue, but it wasn't.  (Truthfully, I wasn't going to remove those screws at all.  But when I took the cabinet off the wall, the left screw pulled straight out.)

The damage:

I attempted to putty the walls, but the holes didn't seem to fill.  The putty just kept falling back into the wall.  I checked my memory and the interwebs, and headed to Home Depot to buy some drywall patches.  While there, the guy looked extremely confused that I couldn't get the putty to work.  He finally just took my word for it and pointed me in the right direction.  

I armed myself with the appropriate tools and got to work.  

I actually trimmed the patches down because they were bigger than I needed them.  

 

Once I got them on the wall, though, they stuck out big time.  Nowhere close to flush with the wall.  Not to mention the fact that they didn't blend in with the wall texture either.  

I ended up peeling off the patches and just using putty after all.  It took about six passes before I was satisfied that I wouldn't accidentally punch a hole right through it.  

 

Isn't it lovely??

That was a few days ago.  

I did the same with the medicine cabinet holes. 

 

Sunday I sanded them down and touched up the paint.  Then last night I finally got around to installing the new screws and new toilet paper dispenser.  TP first.  The new dispenser only had one part to screw in, not two.  I had noticed that the old one was also a little too close to the toilet for my liking, so I decided to push it out a little bit.  I measured for the holes, making sure that it was level.  Remember when I thought the previous owner was crazy for using wall anchors?  Well it turns out that they come with the dispenser as part of the hardware.  I still don't see why, but I decided to go ahead and use them since I paid for them.

I even grabbed the drill since the instructions called for one.  I had to do some improvising since I managed to borrow my parents' drill without any drill bits, but it got the job done.  And by job, I mean holes drilled.  Then I went to hammer in the wall anchor.  It wouldn't go.  

Ugh.  

A stud.  

Even with a drill I couldn't get the hole deep enough for the anchor.  I ended up just moving the entire thing back to right over the original holes.  

  

 

Lovely, right?  I obviously need to re-putty, sand, and paint over those new holes, but that's a job for another day.  

Next up: medicine cabinet.  

I measured, leveled, and nailed in starter holes to mark my spots carefully.  I screwed in the new wall anchor to the left hole with great ease.  The right one?  Not so much.  Another stud. 

Gah!  This is not the kind of stud presence I want in my life right now!

Again, I was not able to drill far enough into the stud for the wall anchor.  Or even a plain screw.  So I tried just using the holes that were there before.  This time I was less successful.  The putty did not provide enough of a support for the wall anchor.  So... I called it quits.  My medicine cabinet wall currently looks like this: 

  

and my medicine cabinet itself will remain here: 

 

 

until I can find a different kind of stud to help me out with this situation.