Dave Newt wrote:
Hi,

Any help gratefully accepted!

I've been trying to attach a speaker bracket to a wall in the house
(1895ish Victoria terrace). The wall is the main front wall of the
house, so is presumably brick and plaster. I think some of the top layer
is probably lime plaster, as it looks like it, though we recently had it
reskimmed with pink and redecorated.

Pic of speaker and bracket:
http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/7264/imag0259x.jpg

Pic of wall: http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/323/imag0258m.jpg

When I was drilling the holes for this, the top inch or so did seem
kinda crumbly and the drill was making larger holes than intended! The
presence of the occasional pebble in the mixture also helped the drill
veer somewhat. It was fixed up there with the supplied screws and wall
plugs (and I used the 6mm drill bit suggested in the instructions).

Close up pic of damage (you can see another pebble there):
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/1594/imag0260g.jpg

So basically, the bracket (and speaker) fell off the wall within a
minute of being put up. Obviously, as well as patching up the walls, I
still need to get the bracket up there and keep it up!

Does anyone have any suggestions on what filler and/or fixings to use? I
could either use holes in the same locations again or go a couple of
inches in either direction if new holes are a better idea.

I wouldn't mind quite so much if we hadn't just paid to have the room
reskimmed and and decorated. (And there was me thinking the lath and
plaster wall would be the difficult one - but I found the stud :-)

Cheers for any help!

Dave

Try drilling deeper and see if it gets more solid and use long fixings.