But will it hang?

Testing out the wreath’s hang this weekend reminded me of a bottle rocket I built in high school. Goofing around in shop class, I ended up building as big a nose cone for my soda bottle rocket as I could. I finished the basic shape with a few days to spare, so I kept adding layer after layer of masking tape until that thing was so heavy I was sure it would fail spectacularly once we tried to launch it. Of course, I hadn’t taken the added aerodynamics into account and it ended up setting the high mark for altitude for the class. I actually broke it off to let other people use it to get passing grades on their rockets. That was 20 years ago, but I guess it sets a pretty good precedent for my “what the hell, let’s try this” -approach succeeding beyond my wildest expectations sometimes. 

It was the weight more than anything that brought that experience to mind. Concerned about the drywall, I wrapped just about the entire frame in packing tape before putting the garland on. Four pieces of garland don’t weigh a lot on their own, but factor in the tape, scrap wood, staples, and ornaments and I think we’re probably well over 10 pounds for the entire thing. The 3M hook is rated at 7.5 lbs, so something might have to give here.

Nothing to do now but cross my fingers I guess.

Hey, that looks halfway decent.

But there’s a lip above the garage door the hook can rest on, and since I don’t think this needs to go anywhere I can slip in some glue to hopefully keep things on the wall. So far so good, although I did end up adding a longer wire to get the wreath hanging a little lower and adding a stabilizing piece of scrap so it was evenly away from the door. I think it looks great, now I just hope it holds up through all the weather we’re supposed to be getting!