Knobs, not just for dressers

Hello and welcome to the second best day of the week – Thursdays rock. Polar vortex can kiss it by the way. Really. Vortex needs to back. off.

Anyway! I was cleaning up in the Bub’s room the other day and was reminded of a fun little decorating tip. Years ago when I redid his room I hung some art on one wall:

Well first I hung molding, painted it all out and then hung the art, but whatever.

There’s a little trick to using cute knobs as more than just functional art for your dressers and I’m here to tell you how. You’re welcome.

On that wall I “hung” each frame from the knobs (more on that in a minute). The knobs I used were from Hobby Lobby and I spelled out “fly” since the room has an airplane theme. (Go here to see more of the room.)

The knobs from Hob Lob have this long screw that is glued in:

Because of that I just put them into the wall that way – just screwed them right in to the drywall. At least one I got into a stud (be sure to drill with a drill bit first), the others are just in the wall and aren’t crazy sturdy.

I was able to get away with doing that because I actually ended up hanging the art with a nail:

The knob and ribbon are just decorative really. I did that because the frames were kind of pulling away from the wall when they were just hanging by the ribbon only and it was bugging me.

So they are secure on the nail – it just looks like they’re hanging from the ribbon:

BUT. There’s a way to make pretty much any knob work as a sturdy “hook” of sorts. Two actually. This first way is useful for those Hobby Lobby knobs because so many of them come with the screw glued in to the actual knob. I’ve tried getting them out before and they won’t budge. So if you’ve got something like that you can use anchors:

Those are my favorite anchors. They make a bigger hole than regular ones but there’s no need to drill a hole and pound them in – you just screw them in to the wall.

So if you’ve got a knob like I have you can insert the anchor into the wall first and then the knob. (Make sure the screw for the knob matches the size of the anchor.) Does that make sense? This way you’re knob will be really secure in the wall and will be able to hold some weight.

There’s another way to do this as well. Most knobs that you’ll find at the hardware store have a screw that you remove to install them. You can’t use that to hang them, so pick up some of these instead:

You’ll have to do some searching in the nuts and bolts aisle but they are there. They come in different sizes too, so bring your knobs that you want to use.

The non-pointy end goes into the knob. The pointy end screws into the wall. Again, if you want to hang something heavy from it you’ll want to use an anchor with this anyway.

Here’s a few of the knobs I have in my stash – you can see the one on the left with the long screw is from Hobby Lobby:

I put one of the doubled ended screws into the one on the right, which is actually an old lamp finial, but that’s a whole other post. ;)

So basically the possibilities are endless! I actually thought of a project while digging through my knobs (that is an odd statement) so hopefully I’ll share that soon.

Here’s another shot of the airplane art in my boy’s room with the knobs as hooks:

So many fun ways to use these! I shared some of my favorites from Hobby Lobby – they have the best selection I’ve seen anywhere.

Have you ever done this little trick?

P.S. Pretty sure I said “knob” 88 times.