Hanging and mounting: art, mirrors, blinds, racks, mailboxes

Cedar Mill Property Repair mounts the things that have to stay where you put them: heavy mirrors and framed art, blinds and curtain rods, mailboxes and house numbers, coat hooks and garage bike racks. Our area is Cedar Mill, Bethany, Beaverton and the neighborhoods around them. Most single jobs run $100-$600, labour only (a Portland-area estimate as of November 2026) . Send a picture of the wall and your list; several items fit one visit.

Slava brings 7 years of his own hands-on experience to every wall he drills.

How much does hanging and mounting cost around Portland?

Each figure below is a local hourly rate multiplied by the usual hours for that job, worked out in November 2026; none is our quote yet. For the hourly rate and the minimum charge per trip, see pricing.

All figures are labour only. You supply the mirror, blinds or mailbox; we bring screws, anchors and cleats .

Most rows start near $100-$150, which is mostly the cost of showing up. A mirror, two blinds and house numbers on one trip means one floor, not three, so send the whole list . We hang wall shelves too, with no figure printed yet .

What can you hang or mount in one visit?

Indoors: art and gallery walls, big mirrors, wall shelves, curtain rods, blinds and shades, coat and key hooks. Outside and in the garage: mailboxes, house numbers, bike hooks, ski racks and wall rails. In summer, a plug-in window air conditioner.

Televisions have their own page, TV mounting. Towel bars and the vanity mirror sit under bathroom refresh, flat-pack pieces under furniture assembly, and a mixed bag of fixes under small jobs.

We leave alone anything that needs a new circuit or outlet, including hard-wired lights and lit house numbers, and anything on a garage door track or opener. We also don't cart away old furniture or debris . Everything outside our scope sits on what we don't do.

How do you hang a heavy mirror or large art so it stays up?

The weight goes into wood, or onto hardware rated for it, never onto one nail. A big mirror gets two fixing points or a French cleat (two interlocking angled strips) instead of a wire over a hook, and we check the frame's D-rings first .

Plenty of older west-side homes still have plaster over wood lath. Plaster cracks if you drill it fast, so it takes a slow bit to land in a stud or lath strip .

This is also earthquake country. Per Oregon's emergency management office, the Cascadia Subduction Zone runs some 700 miles along the coast, offshore. The Earthquake Country Alliance suggests closed hooks for mirrors and pictures and keeping heavy things away from beds, so no heavy glass on an open hook above a headboard. No hook makes anything quake-proof. Bolting and bracing the structure is a separate job: seismic retrofit.

For a gallery wall, paper cut-outs on painter's tape show the layout before the drill comes out . When art moves, the old anchor holes get filled; bigger damage is drywall repair.

Can you install the blinds, shades or curtain rods I bought?

Yes, from a hardware chain or an online shop; we don't sell window coverings. Settle one thing before you order: inside mount (in the opening) or outside mount (on the wall or trim) .

Above most windows sits a solid header, so curtain rod brackets a little above the trim tend to bite into wood. A wide window gets a middle bracket so the rod doesn't bow .

Repairs cover a snapped lift cord, a cracked bracket or wand, or a blind cut down to fit. When a cheap vinyl blind breaks, a new one often costs less than the labour to fix it, and we'll tell you that . If small children live in the house, the Window Covering Manufacturers Association advises cordless coverings and replacing older corded ones.

Can you install a window air conditioner?

Yes, within narrow limits. We set a plug-in unit that runs off an existing outlet, fit a support bracket so the sash doesn't carry the weight alone, and seal the side panels so rain stays out.

We don't add outlets or circuits, and we don't touch mini-splits, through-wall units or refrigerant; those calls belong to an electrician or an HVAC outfit. Pulling the unit out in the fall is simply another visit . A lot of the older houses out here never got central air, which is why these calls come in summer .

How do you install a mailbox and house numbers?

The Postal Service sets the numbers for a curbside box: its bottom or slot 41-45 inches above the road, its front 6-8 inches back from the curb. The post should give way if a car clips it, so a 4x4 wood post or 2-inch metal pipe, buried no deeper than 24 inches, not concrete. Put your house number on the box, and ask the local postmaster before switching to a wall-mounted one.

Before any post hole, we have underground lines marked through 811 . Rain is the other enemy: a wood post rots at the soil line, so it gets ground-contact lumber, gravel at the bottom and no dirt heaped against it . A fence or siding that's already soft is wood rot repair.

Many newer subdivisions, Bethany included, use shared cluster boxes, and those aren't the homeowner's to swap . House numbers should be big and dark-on-light (or light-on-dark) enough to read from the street on a winter evening. On siding, each screw hole gets sealed; on brick, masonry anchors . A leaning mailbox or a missing number is a common fix on a rental turnover.

Can you put up hooks, racks and bike or ski storage?

By the door, hooks have to hold a soaked winter coat without tearing out, so they go into studs or onto a board screwed to the studs .

In the garage, wall rails, bike hooks and ski racks go into studs. Overhead lifts go into the ceiling joists, never drywall by itself, and stay clear of the garage door track and opener . Skis that only come out for Mt. Hood weekends live well up on the wall.