Stripped a screw head in a stud and spent 4 hours fixing it

I was hanging some heavy shelves in my living room in Austin last weekend, using these nice black brackets I found on sale. Everything was going fine until I hit a knot in the stud and my screwdriver just spun right out of that Phillips head... stripped it clean. Tried the rubber band trick, the extra pressure trick, even tried a left-handed drill bit but it just bounced off. Ended up having to cut a hole in the drywall with a jab saw to get a pair of vice grips on the screw body. After all that, I had to patch the drywall and repaint a spot the size of my fist. Has anyone else had to resort to cutting their wall open over a stubborn screw?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_mary12d ago

Was it really that serious though? Couldn't you have just moved the bracket over an inch or two and used a different screw?

garcia.tyler12d ago

Have you ever actually tried to move a bracket over an inch when the stud is right there and you've already drilled pilot holes? The problem with drywall is those little metal mesh strips behind the screw that grab on, and if you shift even a half inch you're basically just chewing up the wallboard with nothing to hold. Plus some of these newer brackets are designed with these little plastic teeth that snap into place, so moving it over an inch means you lose that whole locking mechanism. It's like asking someone to just "adjust" a puzzle piece that's already been glued down.