Might want to try 24 if 16 and 32 aren't working.

Have you tried using one of those magnet stud finders like this? It finds a nail in the stud and sticks to it

18" stud placements? Irregular stud placements?

I have a garage where the drywall isn't attached directly to the studs at all. I ended up having to cut lines across the drywall to find the studs to hang things from (ended up doing it so that the things covered up the lines I had to cut, so it worked out for me, not sure how it would go for you)

Studfinders are of various quality, and hard to troubleshoot.

But a strong magnet should catch on anything ferrous, do you have any you can slide on the wall to find a screw head?

Take an outlet or switch cover off and look between the drywall and the top of the box to see where the stud is (left or right). That will give you an idea where one is and then you can go from there. Remember that they’re 16” on center and they’re 1 1/2” wide, so you could only be missing the stud by a little bit.

Or 12

You cannot assume there is a stud 16" from a corner. If the wall length is not an exact multiple of 16" then necessarily there will be a corner where the stud is at some other distance. But if you take a small nail and try at every inch then you will find a stud somewhere along that length. Then you can measure 16" from that one and expect to find the next one. That is, unless there is a door or a large window along the way, in which case distances may have had to be adjusted there as well.

Your walls wouldn't happened to be plaster and lathe, right? It would be extremely rare for a home built in the 60s to be built that way, but who knows.

Measure from a door jam to your closest outlet. That will give you a ballpark rule by division.

Even if it is a true corner, the wall in question might also start behind the adjacent wall so the center of the first reachable stud will be about 12.75” from the corner (assuming 1/2 drywall)

Right. Someone else here mentioned it: locate a power outlet. The electrical box for them are nailed against a stud, which is either on the left or right side of the box, so you only need to try two positions with a nail to find a first stud. Then measure in 16" multiples to locate the rest.

You can pull the baseboard off, if it’s fairly easy and use nails to figure out the spacing then put it back in place. Just a thought.

This, do this.

I have a similar one to this and it works great, it finds the drywall screws which SHOULD be in the studs.

Check for nail holes in the baseboard, especially if the nails holes are higher that about 1.5”.

I used strong magnets hot glued onto a long string and just kind of moved it along the walls. When it froze, that's where my stud was. Then I made a mark on the wall and kept going in order to mark where the whole stud might be.

Find an electrical outlet. They are nailed to a stud

If the building is original and hasn't been renovated, then the studs could be anywhere from 12" centers all the way to 24" on interior walls due to the age of the building. I've seen some with 4 foot centers as well.

They can be 24” OC, especially in older buildings.

Fun fact. My house was built in 1939. The guy who built my house must not have known about 16" on center, he also didn't own a tape measure. Or a level haha

I installed security systems for a summer, and we had to drill a finger-sized hole behind the panel to drop the wire down the stud space to pop out at an outlet for the plug. I was having the absolute worst time getting the pull, ended up with a palm-sized hole (still fine, it would be hidden by the panel) and couldn't make it. With the customer's blessing, my manager (who had come to find out what was taking me so long) cut a hole big enough to look inside the wall. The framer had decided to slant a stud from bottom left to top right of the "cell" for some idiot reason, and the angle was slight enough that we couldn't sense it by touch. Moral of the story, don't trust that the framer from a full sixty years ago did what they were supposed to do, or that nothing has been changed since then.

My house was built early 80s and studs are 24” apart.

My house was built in the 70s, the studs were 24" on center.

Why not 8 for good measure!

Find a patch of a couple feet wide in the general area that you’re wanting to find a stud. Use a finger knuckle to tap on the wall noting the tone that’s made. Move laterally in one direction, continuing to tap the wall. As you get closer to a stud, the tone should get shorter and slightly higher. As you move away from a stud, the tone gets deeper. This method will get yah relatively close to a stud. Then, in an area that’s less conspicuous, maybe near the floorboard, use a small finishing nail to tap into the wall. If it pops through easily, no stud; keep moving in one direction about an inch and a half laterally from the original hole. If you’ve gone maybe 6-8 inches in one direction and by the tone you can tell you’re going in the wrong direction, just pop back to the other side of your original hole and move in that direction.

16" on center might not have been code in that area back in 1939 when lumber was rough cut 2" by 4" . Also, I expect some of the house may have settled in the last 83 years.

Check the YMCA, usually a few there

find an outlet and the stud finder should find the stud on either side. measure 16 in and check then measure 24 inches and check.

12 inch spacing was a standard in carpentry. 16 is the norm now. 8 is not.

Edit so was 24 I believe 24 requires 2x6s instead of 2x4s

Get yourself a nice rare earth magnet. It was a game changer for me in my plaster and lathe house

Magnet style stud finder is the first one I bought when I got my first apartment. 20 years later and I've never bought or even considered getting another studfindee. This is the only way to do it in my opinion. My last dog chewed up the studfinder when she was a puppy so it's covered in little holes but it still works like the day I bought it.

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).

I have small but very strong magnets for my fridge, and they will stick to nails/screws in drywall. Easy and non-electronic way to find studs.

It's 16" on center but you don't know which which end of the wall they started on. Maybe it was the other end. As others have said 24" on center can also be a thing.

Are the walls lathe and plaster? Because if so that might be why it's hard to find the studs and stud finders are working..

LOL, my house has both. Drove me nuts trying to hit in my outdoor closet (interior wall).

Folks, I have been lurking for years, watching all the fabulous DIY on various streams ... thought to meself, I could give that a go ... and discovered that, in Dublin, walls are solid. So, the electric drill doesn't do what is necessary (as in I have 2mm to 5mm deep holes fecken everywhere in me gaff) ... All & every piece of advice would be appreciated. No banana for scale I'm afraid, you'll have to work out just how "deep" those measurements are please

Feel your pain. 1933 house. Not a single square anything anywhere

Very carefully pull off a piece of the baseboard. You can cut a 1/4” - 1/2” channel where the trim will cover it.

Once you find them, replace the baseboard using a little bit of Liquid Nails.

Just be careful if the top has been sealed up with caulking/paint. Use a sharp razor knife to very carefully slice that along the top edge.

What are you trying to hold?

Those spring anchor anchors are good for 80+ lbs

have seen things that I'm pretty sure were spaced based on the hammer length. All evenly spaced, just at no interval that made any sense.

That's not a guarantee either. Old work gang boxes can go anywhere, because they clamp onto the wall.

I've also seen fuckery like gang boxes screwed to box bridges spanning studs.

Personally, I just use my finger. You tap on the wall. Hollow sounds mean no stud, then it sounds more solid, and you've found the stud.

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You tap the wall with your finger. You'll hear hollow sounds when you're between studs and solid thumps when you are on the stud.

If you mark a couple that way, you can dial it in if you're not sure.

I’m currently renovating a house with 19.2 OC main floor joists, 16 OC main floor studs, 24 OC attic joists and roof rafters.

The attic joists also simply meet end to end in the center over a non-load-bearing 2x4 wall with a single top plate, and zero headers in the doorway openings in said wall.

Point load, and a great many other pretty essential things, basically don’t exist.

Shockingly, it’s one of the straightest, most level and plumb homes I’ve ever worked on… which likely has a lot to do with the fact that it’s all rough cut old growth Douglas Fir. Beautiful lumber, and still really straight.

But yeah… it’s a 1920s house built by the original occupant. The client is that guy’s granddaughter.

Mine is from 1850, interior walls are 18" on center, studs the wide way. Exterior are 14" o.c., everything is rough cut chestnut real 2x4, and sheds nails unless you drive dead straight; I think it's half petrified. Balloon frame.

Stud finder is useless, it's all plaster and lath, I'm still replacing knob and tube, slightly complicated by needing to work around the defunct pipes from the gas lighting the knob and tube replaced. I tore out some 1.5" drains that had an actual inside diameter of less than 1/2" due to decades of buildup.

And yet it still feels more solid than any modern house I've been in, the insurance company says replacement cost is 480k (sale price was 109k). 18" thick stone foundation.

If you got a powerful fridge magnet… drag that bad boy up and down the wall where you think a stud should be and wait for the magnet to give resistance. A strong enough magnet will catch on the drywall screws… then hope the drywall screws are actually in the studs

Magnet(i use neodymium) on some tape, slide the magnet around once it gives resistance you have found a nail. stud should be there. Its the only way i can find studs in my house because in a previous remodel instead of ripping out the failing plaster/drywall they just threw up another layer in pretty much every single room.

None of these techniques work in my house from 1850. Best I can do is measure stud distances in the attic and work my way from the nearest window.

There really wasn’t any sort of cohesive code requirement of any sort until 1950. What we (at least in the US) refer to as the International Building Code wasn’t even established until 2000.

It’s been pretty much a piecemeal endeavor since Ye Olden Time.

~EDIT~ Fat finger number correction.

I see plenty of good suggestions but what worked for me is using one of the existing holes I drilled that didn't hit a stud and taking a length of coat hanger and bending it, slide into the hole and rotate to find the stud.

I use a neodymium magnet that I sweep slowly over the wall until it picks up a drywall screw.

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My house was built in the 90's and has some on 16" and some on 24". Annoying.

Use the compass in your phone bro it’s a magnet

Get a stronger stud finder. My walls are drywall then plaster. Almost 2” thick in spots. A regular stud finder does nothing for me, but I’ve got a higher end one that can find them.

Otherwise the old outlet box trick is a good way to start.

Measuring 16” from the corner isn’t a good way because the wall probably isn’t a perfect multiple of 16”. That corner could have been the end of the wall when they framed it. A 170” wall from the tail end is going to have studs at 10”, 26”, 42”, etc

Just FYI, some builds in that era have 24” stud spacing.

My first house was built in 1841. None of the studs were the same spacing. In their defense, there wasn’t any 4x8 plywood or anything like that, so they just put the studs wherever they worked out with the wood that they had.

yea, i always heard either 16" or 12" on center

I’ve never had my 25 year old stud finder not tell me exactly where they are in many houses/apts, but I never lived in anything older than 1973.

IBC was 2000, UBC was 1927.

Are you sure they're not cement or cinder block walls?

When I can't find studs I use a magnet to find the screws that are holding the drywall to the studs.

https://youtu.be/OVGHG-1CNKY

Find the most powerful magnet you have. Ours happens to be the magnet "key" that keeps our toddler out of the cabinets. Gently slide the magnet around on the wall, near where you'd like to hang your whatever. The magnet will snap on to the closest drywall screw head it can find. Pow, there's your stud.

Edit: Do not drill exactly where the magnet stopped. There's already a screw there.

Get a cheap-ass stud finder for like $10. Read the instructions. Many of them register at the edge of the stud, so you have to find it from both directions.

You have plaster walls. You won’t find a stud with a machine.

Get a sewing pin and tap it in gently. If you punch through, pull it out and move 1-1/2" over and try again. Repeat until you hit wood all the way.

I use a strong magnet to find screws or nails.

Magnet doesn’t work on plaster walls. Does work on drywalls though.

I also have to recommend the Franklin 710 stud finder series. The people who framed out our rental must have had on beer goggles, and that stud finder is the only way for us to reliably find them.

My last house was built in the 60’s and had shiplap behind the drywall. You might have a similar situation. Maybe take a cover plate off an outlet/switch and see if you can see behind the drywall next to the junction box.

All of the suggestions are solid but if you already drilled a small hole, take a wire hanger and find it behind the wall that way to know which direction you need to go. Then just measure over and test it to make sure.

Deep stud finder, or a flexible cable camera

I’m right here

You might be able to hit the nails on the lath.

But some of my plaster walls have a wire mesh in them too, so good luck with that.

Your missing studs.

My house was built in 1964. The way I found my studs was to remove the baseboard trim and I was able to see the bottoms of the studs. I made a mark in the center of each one on the drywall that would be concealed by the baseboard trim when I replaced it.

This helped establish the spacing they used when they built the house.

Then I used a 4 foot level to follow them up to the location where I needed to drill a fastener, made a mark and worked from there.

Sometimes I had to cut a bit of drywall away at the bottom to reveal the stud. That's OK, because the baseboard concealed that when I replaced it.

This works if you have trim, if you can remove it easily and if you know how to re-attach it.

I tried a magnet to a string. Dangle it along the wall until it sticks to a screw/nail. That's where the stud is.

🫲Muffin, nice to meet you finally!

>I have a garage where the drywall isn't attached directly to the studs at all.

I almost went insane not finding the studs in my garage! As it turns out they layed what seems to be 1"×4"×8' boards horizontally over the studs, then drywall over those. So if you run a stud finder horizontally you'll never find them because there's an air gap between the stud and the drywall.

24" is non-load bearing interior walls. Some interior walls are load bearing depending on the span of your roof. 16" is load bearing.

Simply enough just use a strong magnet, it will be attracted to the nails in the studs and boom, you find your studs. From there you can do it a couple more times and use logical deduction to figure out how far apart the studs are. just because 16" or 12" is standard depending where you are or what wall type it is doesn't mean everyone followed every rule back then.

When in doubt, get the toggle bolts haha

Inner wall studs may be spaced differently than outer wall studs, especially in older builds/apartments. Try 24" centers and if that doesn't work try tapping to listen for a stud.

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The internal walls in this old apartment building I live in are 20” on center…

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Studfindee is definitely what I’m calling the stud finder from now on

My wife wants to know too.

If you have any magnets maybe try to look for a drywall screw in a stud. Should find one after sliding it around a bit.

Hey, that's when my house is from! And everything is weird sizes, and much of it is slightly crooked.

Sigh. It makes working on anything in the house super frustrating. I hate it

>Remember that they’re 16” on center

that's only if the walls were built to code by competent workers. If at some point the place had been remodeled by a previous owner's handyman cousin it could be a different story.

Oops. Fat fingered it. 2000 for IBC is correct. Solid catch.

Could be 24" on centers

UBC was indeed initiated in 1927, but was only really used in the western United States. It was based in California, if memory serves.

The first national level building code was formed by BOCA (Building Office and Code Administration). The compiled code was first released in 1950, a full 35 years after the inception of the organization.

There are numerous state and regional codes that predate all of the aforementioned, of course.

But the first cohesive compilation of truly national code requirements was indeed in 1950.

Use a magnet, find a screw or nail, go above and below to find two more screws, use a pencil to connect the dots and now you have an accurate idea of where is the stud

A finish nail to search for the studs can cause less dust and if you vary the height of your test holes there won’t be a line of dots that catch the eye.

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.

>the drywall screws which SHOULD be in the studs.

<Sweats in "Amateur Drywalling">

I use a magnet and mark wherever I find a nail head. If I find enough of these in a row, I've found a stud.

Get a magnetic stud finder. The drywall is home with screws in the magnet will find the screws.

Or use a strong magnet if you have one.

You are probably missing the stud by a fraction of an inch. Instead of jumping another 16" from where you first went through, you should have gone 1/2"

Learn to use the stud finder properly. Videos on YT.

just use anchors

Hold a flashlight near the wall shining across the surface. Look for the imperfections in the drywall where the nails are.

Use the magnet method. Drywall is nailed on to studs. If you use magents and locate a column of three evenly spaced nails that line up vertically, you can be pretty certain that there's a stud there, especially if there's another column to the left or the right about 16" apart.

See this demonstrated in this instruction on making a DIY magnet stud finder made using a magnet, dental floss, and tape:

Instructables | Inexpensive and reliable stud finder

my experience with plaster walls is that they're strong af. you can drill straight into them for most things, unless you're mounting a bike or something

Eh… not always… not even usually, in my area. At least for interior walls.

Typically only walls perpendicular to the joists are load bearing (though there are rare exceptions).

Load bearing walls should all have proper point load (translating the actual load all the way down to the foundation in a direct path).

Though not always required depending on the region, double top plates are almost always used for load bearing walls, and not for partition (non loading bearing) walls. This is especially noteworthy if you are in a situation like I am right now with 19.2 OC main floor joists, 16 OC main floor studs, and 24 OC joists and rafters in the attic/roof. The double plate gives you a bit of latitude to work with for adequate point load.

For simplicity and consistency’s sake, I frame every wall at 16 OC in a typical stick built home. And that’s typically the case for most other builders in my area.

But, it’s also worth noting that some areas are fully ok with 24 OC 2x4 walls throughout. I definitely don’t recommend it. But you can get away with it in some places without a fuss.

Then, of course you get into engineered lumber, trusses, etc., and shit gets exciting. Suddenly, you have no interior load bearing walls, exterior load bearing walls are mostly header to accommodate an insulting number of floor to ceiling windows… all sorts of tomfoolery and poppycock.

But, anyway… when in doubt consult a structural engineer… don’t be that asshole that has to dig someone’s dead dog out of the rubble of the house you just destroyed by removing something you shouldn’t have. Engineers are often pompous douche bags (at least in my area), but they’ve saved my bacon a few times when things weren’t so cut and dry because of prior shoddy work that disguised major structural issues.

In my neck of the woods, we see a lot of 19.2 OC in homes from that era. But, depending on your region/state, there may have also just been no enforced building codes at the time… meaning it very well could be totally random.

I’ve seen “headers” over main entry doors made out of weird shaped scraps of beadboard of all stupid nonsense.

A lot of times they just used whatever bullshit they had within reach. Especially in depression era buildings.

Use a strong magnet and run along the wall until you find a nail or screw. Then go up and down to find the left and right limits.

Also, you can’t expect the studs to be 16 from an inside corner. Layout is mainly for exterior sheathing and starts from an outside corner which outside corner? You can’t tell. Tldr: stud finder.

Cries in lath and plaster

Stick a curved metal coat hanger through the holes you made until you hit a stud. Or just check where an electrical outlet is...

You’d be hard pressed to find a brand new house built last year that’s actually square.

Most people would be shocked at just how rough the rough framing gets.

As a GC that likes to do the framing personally, I try to keep it as square as humanly possible… it isn’t fine woodworking. But I think it should be real close. 89° - 91° is typically not going to give you too much sass at finish time.

If nothing else, it keeps my subs from bitching too much.

On a similar note… I’m constantly surprised by how few framing crews I see that don’t use an eight foot level and a power plane to dial in the final framing. Some of these novice and journeymen guys don’t even know what I’m talking about when I bring it up.

It’s sad how we went from an industry largely made up of craftsmen to a bunch of meth heads pretending to be installers. Most guys will talk a big game about being a craftsman, but their idea of level and plumb has you searching for their meth pipe.

There are still a bunch of really solid guys out here getting the good work done. But it’s so hard to find them in the sea of shitbags.

And, in my experience, shitbags do shitty work. And it shows when you see just how far shit is off square, and considered “good work” these days. Scary, if you ask me.

often in the corners there is more than one support beam so the 16" does not start at the corner.

Also, it could have started from the opposite corner. Very commonly the last stud in a wall might only be 8 or 10 inches or whatever from the corner because they started at the opposite wall.

Also, sometimes there's a window or door or something that causes there to be a support beam in a place that throws off the 16" from the wall. So, you just need to find one in the middle of the wall. and then go 16" from there.

Also, older construction sometimes had studs at 24".

If you're going to use nails to find it, then I recommend getting a very thin nail and then trying to locate the stud with as little damage as possible. If the wall is white or off white you can use toothpast to fill in the small holes. However, getting a stud finder is the best way and they are cheap.

did you run the stud detector on yourself first to ensure that bad baby knows what's up?

Your wall might not have studs. Seriously. I live in a high-rise condo (originally a rental building) built in the 1960s, and here’s what I found when I replaced the tap for my bathtub:

The “wet wall” was made of expanded metal lath and plaster. At roughly 1 foot intervals, there was a vertical piece of U channel formed from heavy sheet metal, roughly 3/4” wide with 3/8” legs. These channels were the closest thing to studs in that wall.

The way I have found studs in my place is taping a piece of a fridge magnet onto some dental floss.

Then I gently move it over the wall. Eventually it will pass over a hidden screw and kind of hang up for a bit. Then I am sure that the stud is there.

> Stud finder finds nothing

Stud finders, unless you spent some cash, are notoriously unreliable. Your experience is not surprising--unfortunate, but not surprising. Try a magnet to locate the drywall screws, buy a better fineder, or use another method.

> Measured out 16" from the corner and drilled a small hole, went straight through.

Even if your studs are 16" on center, that doesn't mean they are 16" from any point or feature. The wall may start anywhere inside or even beyond the corner, or the studs might have been laid out to make cutting in windows, doorways, or other features easy.

Once you have located a stud, you can usually find other studs this way, but this won't necessarily help you find your first stud.

Your studs might also be 24" on center, depending on the wall specs, or might even shift to make framing easier. The code is a minimum, not a rule.

• Magnets are my go-to, you can even find magnet-based stud finders.

• Most power receptacles and light switches will be installed against a stud, so look to either side (this is very NOT true for phone, cable, or other low-voltage outlets, or anything installed after construction was complete).

• Finally, knocking along the wall will usually let you center in on a stud.

None of these is going to give you a "right there", but you can usually get a 4-6" target and narrow down from there. The nails are a good check.

My first apartment I spent a week looking delicately for a stud in this wall … only to realize it was hollow (all the interior walls in the apartment were just attached to these metal strips. There’s a name for them but totally weirdest thing.

Goes without saying the actual structure was concrete boxes with huge concrete pillars.

The magnetic or metal detecting stud finders actually work great for lath & plaster because it picks up the rows of nails where the lath is attached to the studs. At least that was my experience.

I use a neodymium magnet from a hard drive to find the drywall screws if you have drywall. You can buy them at the hardware store also or use any powerful magnet.

19.2 is a metric layout. Some tape measures have little black diamonds on this layout.

The first time I did hit a stud, I was a taken back. I'd never found any in rentals

I do the same. Have a fancy Bosch Pro stud finder. But a handfull of small (10x10x3mm) neodymium magnets works better.

The stud finder is very useful for finding pipes and electrical cables though.

24 can be load bearing too if you do stacked framing. In regions w low live loads it’s common and more than adequate.

I've got drywall over lath & plaster, so I knew to get a magnetic studfinder. But whoever did the drywall apparently felt it was fine to just go into the lath with the screws, rather than concern themselves with finding studs. I still have no idea where the studs are in most of my walls.

Yes they do - normal studfinders don't work on lath & plaster walls, so magnetic's about the only option. They can be tricky, though, as the lath isn't necessarily only nailed together over studs, or like jooes mentioned, some walls use wire mesh.

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And some newer - it's more efficient to use 2x6s on 24" centers vs 2x4s on 16s, in terms of exposure for exterior walls.

But it's also worth knowing older houses took "on center" measurements as more of a suggestion. I insulated the crawlspace in my 120-year old house last year and the joist spacing was interesting, to say the least.

Of course it's more solid, it's built with real building materials. Modern "16 inches on center" bullshit was drafted based on using the cheapest 1 3/4x2 7/8 softass yellow pine available on clearance from Lowes. Modern homes are a fucking travesty, I've worked on so many $750k McMansions and $300k shitbox condos that are going to be falling apart in 7 years it's depressing. My ex-wife and I had a mail order Sears house built in the 50s that was more astonishingly well built than literally any new house I've worked on in the past decade.

>19.2 OC main floor joists, 16 OC main floor studs, 24 OC attic joists and roof rafters

My eye is twitching Hard reading this.

Strong magnet on a string should find any nails or screws attached to the studs.

When I build my house/recording studio, I’m going with steel studs. It’ll end up outlasting any of the $10M+ homes I worked on a couple years ago. Tragic.

Should be nailed to a stud.

“Advanced” framing

Metal studs are still studs, and can be used as support. They aren't quite as good at holding racking weight, but it's better to be near the upright rather than far from it.

They're super common in commercial construction.

These were not metal studs (note that I listed their dimensions). Metal studs that I’ve seen have roughly the same dimensions as a 2x4.

Strong magnet is what we always use. Drag it around until you find a nail head

Look for nail pops! :)

It only means anything to have even on centers when you build with sheet goods.

Oh, true, yeah.

That doesn't sound like a wall but more of a stand off. Like somebody didn't want to back it with plywood but had some random lengths of metal channel 3/4 in wide. That's some wierd "engineering".

that's all that was behind it? That's what is concerning. If I was faking a plywood based wet wall that's how I'd build it, 1 ft centers (In reality I'd use concrete board like a normal person, but not in this bizarro build), but if it's unsupported like you said, that's just crazy. It's a pretend wall.

I've long been of the opinion that builders just make shit up as they go along if you aren't there to police them every day for their bullshit. My sister had her last house constructed and had to have them tear out basically the entire stairwell because of just imbecilic pants on head stupid contstruction that they never would have caught if they hadn't gone through the building with a fine tooth comb almost every close of day.

If you REALLY need to find studs and nothing else works, do this: pull off the baseboard trim and start drilling holes 2" off the floor- high enough to miss the bottom plate but low enough to be covered by the baseboard. Once you hit one, you should be able to measure out the rest.

If nothing else works, drill a small, easily filled hole in the drywall near where you want to mount the shelf supports. Bend a wire hanger (remember those?) to a 90° angle and thread it through the hole.

When you rotate the hanger it will hit the stud and you should be able to tell where the stud is with enough precision to attach a shelf mount to it. Or maybe you'll get lucky with the 1st hole...

Metric? Isn't it just 1/5 of 8 feet?

It gets better. One of the washers between the strainer basket and the tailpiece for my kitchen (double) sink started to leak, literally a 50 cent part. Tailpieces were soldered into drain pipe rather than using slip joints, slight angle so fitting screwed onto strainer basin damaged the basin’s threads, had to replace strainer basin. Did you know that between the 1960s and the 1990s, there was a change in strainer basins - they now project roughly 1/2” less below the bottom of the sink? Had to replace both strainer basins and crossover pipe because a 50 cent washer was installed in a manner where it couldn’t be replaced.

All the lights and half the outlets are on one circuit. One of the outlets on that circuit is near floor level where the fridge was when I bought the place (from the cabinets, it looks like that space was intended for the fridge - fridges should be on their own circuit). I moved the fridge to what looked like where the ironing board was supposed to be set up (outlet on its own circuit). Previous owner had painted over many switches/outlets, so I was replacing them. Removed fuse from circuit for “old fridge” outlet, was detaching wires from the outlet. Detached one of the wires from the neutral side, there was a spark. The neutral return for another circuit went into one of the silver screws on this outlet and out of the other. Set up a pigtail - both wires and a short one go into a wire nut, short one goes to new outlet, so any future outlet replacement won’t leave a loose live wire.

I bought a house last year, and in several rooms I could not find studs on any interior walls. Baffling. I'd find screws, but then when I'd drill I'd find no stud behind it. Weirdest thing.

Finally realized somewhere along the way drywall sheets were hung over the old lath and plaster walls, so the studs are far enough back to be undetectable with magnetism. The screws are just kind of random and only sink into the previous wall, not the studs. I've considered pulling off the drywall to see what's actually going on back there (I assume water damage, as many places in the house have water damage), but then I'd have a bunch of drywall to replace, in addition to everything else that needs doing.

I also live in an old building and the studs are horizontal rather than vertical. Just a thought

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.

Jesus Christ.

Who just paints over outlets? That doesn't make them stop being electrically active!

I hate to say it but you picked a winner of a condo.

I had some super strong magnets for a craft project and used those to find studs. Worked like a charm.

What finder did you get? I got one decently rated thing on Amazon, and never did find anything with it. Broke it in a rage rather than even bother returning it.

Bought a cheap Hart finder from Wally World, and that thing is worth its weight in gold.

Also, if you have old plaster walls, good luck. I've never had any luck with those in my last house, and ended up just drilling to figure out the OCs.

Use a stud finder or tap along. When you suspect you have a stud use a thin screwdriver of similar and punch through the wall to check you do indeed have a stud.

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Just get a demo-saw and start on one end of the wall, about titty-height and just go ripping nuts, all the way across the room... Then repeat at about head height, then do two vertical cuts on each end.

Now then grab your claw hammer and pull the cut sections off... You can then see the studs, and even measure the distance between each one! 😁

Stud finder here. We find studs for all your breeding needs.

It's a Ryobi. Not the greatest, but pretty adequate tools usually.

487.68mm centers.

Should be good. Hart is basically rebranded Ryobi.

Rare earth magnet to find the dry wall nails

Track shelving. Some books, plants, decorations, that kind of thing.

How would I know? Don't say ask the landlord, they have less than no idea.

Mmm, previous owners. I've seen that move before. It's way easier than removing the plaster and fudging with misaligned studs, but they could've at least drilled some holes and located them. Some people just think wood is wood I guess. One of the first fixes in my house was to put a new light fixture in the kitchen and replace 3/4 of the kitchen ceiling because one of the previous owners thought it okay to mount a big metal light can to lath. And by "mount" I mean cut a hole and just rest it on the lath from above. Half the ceiling was sagging and threatening to cave as a result.

48,768 cm doesn't really scream metric to me. 50 cm would be 19.685".

This seems just weird and random? Might've just been what evenly decides one (or some) of the walls or something?

can also use an electrical "tongue" to push on through the point and figure out where it hits.

Make sure you switch off the breakers before doing so tho

You can knock on the wall and listen to the sound. The empty space between studs will have a lower pitch and the stud will have a shallow pitch. Imprecise to an untrained ear, but it will give you a hint.

You can also look at the wall itself. There are often visible signs of where the nails were hammered in to attach the drywall in the first place.

Not a lot of building codes in the 60s.

Bold of you to assume there's studs in there

Don't start on the corner looking for 16" o.c. studs... Most outlets are mailed to a stud, measure from there. +1 on stud magnet though, it is all I use.

That ain't no metric layout. 450mm is.

Metric doesn't use 50cm as a common spacing. It is all 300, 450, 600, 900, etc. basically using 1200 mm increments a base metric and then using factors of that.

Well "Cheap" framing doesn't sound quite as nice on a quote.

Have you worked with the lightweight steel studs? They make a 2x4 look solid af. Steel light framing is awesome when it is well engineered but if it is done wrong it can twist and crumple into a heap.

Yikes, I'm glad I have bricks and wood