Handyman:

Q. What's the best way to hang a picture on a plaster wall? The picture is 20 inches by 24 inches and weighs about 10 pounds.

A. The simplest way (not necessarily the easiest) is the best one. Use picture hooks, sold in hardware stores. They come in several sizes. For your size and weight picture, use large hooks. Make sure there is a wire strung from each end of the picture a few inches down from the top. It's the hanging wire. Use two hooks whether you are hanging the picture vertically or horizontally. You need two to keep pictures from going askew whenever an 18-wheeler passes by. Do not use any other gadgets that might be available. You can do a good job with only a 2-foot spirit level to make sure the hangers are level with each other.

To determine where the hooks will go, hold the picture against the wall, and mark the hook spots with a pencil. Now, place a 4-by-4-inch piece of duct tape over each pencil spot, and make sure you mark the spot on the tape. Now drive the hooks. They are designed to be nailed at a steep angle. This angle, plus the duct tape, will prevent breaking the plaster, whether is it is truly plaster or plasterboard or blueboard and skimcoat.

Q. My daughter bought a house on Cape Cod and found an old mahogany table that was stained red. She tried to paint it. Oh, woe. The red stain bled right through the paint. What can she do?

A. Ah, yes, stained mahogany is virtually impossible to paint without the bleeding. Sanding down to the bare wood probably won't work because mahogany is open-pored, and any stain gets stuck in the pores forever, it seems. Even heavy sanding and using a stain killer did not succeed on a similar table I had. I ended up resanding to the bare wood, staining it a darker color, and varnishing it.

Q. What do you think of air-duct cleaning? The ducts in my home are for heat and air conditioning. I don't know how long they have gone without being cleaned, and I get no bad smells from either the heat or the air conditioning.

A. I think air-duct cleaning is good but expensive. If you don't know when the ducts were cleaned, chances are they need it. My ducts were 50 years old and there was no smell, but you should have seen what came out of them when they were cleaned. Have them cleaned every 10 years. And make sure to clean out the dryer vent at least once a year: These can fill with lint and cause fires.

Write to Peter Hotton at photton@globe.com.

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