Educational-Fig-2330 t1_j9deeeo wrote on February 21, 2023 at 2:33 AM

My last house was apparently built by a fun-loving rag-tag band of beer drinking, pot smoking misfit miscreants pulled off the streets and handed hammers to meet booming demand for new housing in the 70s. If your house was built by the same ilk, your studs might not be any consistent number "on center." I had some studs 8" apart and some 4ft apart. Hidden behind caulk and new layers of paint, you would find perforated lines between 1ft and 3ft long where I went in hammering in a brad nail every 1/2" until I found stud. My studs might be 24" apart at the top and 19" apart at the bottom or vise versa. Not a single thing was straight, plumb, or level. Inside the walls we found beer cans and roaches (not insects).

_dougorama t1_j9dy5py wrote on February 21, 2023 at 5:27 AM

This this this.

Get some very thin nails. Take your best guess at where a stud is by hitting the wall with your hand or use an outlet as described in multiple other posts. Hit it hard if you need to. Tap a brad nail in. If you feel resistance once it penetrates the drywall or plaster, you hit a stud. If not, pull the nail and try again just a bit further left or right. If you are hanging a shelf cover the unnecessary holes with the shelf.

PotatoRacingTeam t1_j9ebnml wrote on February 21, 2023 at 8:10 AM

If you lived in Winnipeg at the time, I can almost guarantee that place was built by Qualico homes. Your assessment of their hiring process is spot on, and has not changed one iota, in all these years.