I have always loved hammocks, and for the last 4 or 5 years I have been dreaming of hanging one in my place.
The problem? The walls in my 1929 building have no studs. It's brick on the exterior, and some studless plaster over thin metal frame in the exterior (structure provided by giant steel beams).
Two years ago I decided to go for it and cut a half dozen holes in my wall only to give up having found nothing I could possibly anchor into and hang a hammock from. I admitted defeat.
Then earlier this year I got a cheap rusty 10ft outdoor hammock stand for free from craigslist in order to hopefully convince myself that having a hammock in the house was actually not something I would really want. Only it had the opposite effect and I was determined once again to have a hammock in my living room.
When I explained the difficulty I was having figuring out a way to install a hammock everyone said the same thing -- just use the stand.
Never. Even a beautiful hammock stand would be an eyesore if it had to be sitting in the living room all the time, even when i didn't want it. And most hammock stands are serious eyesores.
So after a few weeks of planning and purchasing parts, 3 days ago I began Project Impossible Hammock.
The results after 3 solid days of work, one catastrophe that I hope I've figured a way around (unexpectedly hollow bricks 10 inches deep in exterior wall):
Note that all the crazyness you see below is all done in order to create stable surface to mount the anchors to.
In order to mount to the interior living room wall, I cut a 4x4 hole from the living room into the office, and then put a 4x4 post through the wall flush with the living room wall, and strongly screwed the post into a wall-to-wall bookcase on the other side of the wall in my office:
On the exterior living room wall, I thought I was going to have an easy time, using
Sleeve Anchors specially designed to mount in brick. I bought an SDS drill for the project which can drill through hard brick like butter. These sleeve anchors can hold an insane amount of force if properly mounted in brick (like 5000 pounds). However, the nasty surprise I disovered however was that the first 10" of the exterior brick wall was actually made up of mostly hollow brick -- unsuitable for holding much weight:
My solution was to expand the cut out on the exterior wall even more, which revealed that lower on the wall they actually did have full depth of brick. Then I used the sleeve anchors and some toggle bolts to attach a 30"x10" 3/4 inch oak board to the brick in a half dozen places to spread out the weight. I anchored into full brick where I could, and then put a couple in the mortar between the hollow bricks (normally a no-no but i think a reasonable compromise that seemed to offer best hold onto surrounding hollow brick), and one toggle bolt directly into middle of a hollow brick. I used my torque wrench (for car work mostly) to tighten the sleeve anchors to proper torque, and then I mounted the hammock anchor onto that board.
Here I am testing it..
Then I replastered the walls to cover up the oak board, etc. I actually had to use a dremel to cut off the bolt heads and even then built up and feather out the plaster wall another half inch to fully cover and hide the mounting board. But the result was what I wanted -- nearly invisible hammock mounting points when there is no hammock present:
And now I wait to see if it holds. After all this work, if it fails I don't know if I will emotionally survive.
Recent Posts