Drywall – how to remove these screws without taking a huge chunk of wall with them

drywallscrews

I'm not sure what these screws are called so I'm not sure what to search for.

On mobile having trouble tagging, so feel free to edit.

Below are pictures of the screw in its deployed and non deployed state

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Basically it's a wide head screw that screws into the wall in a non stud area, and a normal screw is screwed into that. The screw in question (that goes into the wall) has a "flap" or piece/hinge that deployed in the wall to balance the weight I'm assuming.

I can't figure out how to get them out of the wall when the hinge is deployed. Any ideas?
I'll try to upload a picture of I can

Best Answer

The anchor shown is one of the variants of toggle bolt/anchors that have sections that slide laterally after they are inserted into the wall. It is virtually impossible to remove these without doing some damage to the wall. As @ojait has suggested in his answer describing hollow wall anchors (sometimes called mollies), you really need to push the anchor in since you can't pull it out.

The easiest way is usually to use an awl and drive a series of small holes around the perimeter of the anchor flange. Then use a screwdriver (phillips would probably work best) to push the anchor into the wall cavity. Patch and move on.

The original toggle bolts were a breeze to remove. When you removed the bolt, the separate spring loaded toggle simple fell into the cavity, leaving a neat hole to patch. Newer toggles use a flange on the outside and retain the sliding toggle so that the bolt can be inserted and removed repeatedly. The ease of reuse is offset by the difficulty in eliminating. (I still think they are a vast improvement over the original.)