Five Tools Every Homeowner Actually Needs
Forget the giant rolling toolbox. Most home repairs come back to the same handful of tools — and a couple of them aren't what you'd expect.
Walk into a hardware store with a vague intention and you’ll walk out three hundred dollars poorer. The truth is that for ninety percent of what a homeowner actually deals with, five tools — under two hundred dollars total — will get the job done.
1. A real claw hammer, not a tack hammer
Sixteen ounces, smooth face, hickory handle if you can find one. The plastic-handled hammers are fine and last longer, but they transmit shock to your wrist. You will not notice this on the first nail. You will notice it on the fiftieth.
2. A combination square
Not a speed square. Not a framing square. A six- or twelve-inch combination square with a head that slides and locks. This is the tool you’ll reach for the most and never quite know why — it marks, it measures, it checks for square, it doubles as a small straightedge.
3. A cordless drill with two batteries
Twelve-volt is fine for most household work; eighteen-volt is overkill until it isn’t. The second battery is the part most people skip and then regret. You will run a battery down halfway through a job and a second one means you finish the job rather than waiting an hour.
Written By
Sam Carter
Twenty years working with wood, drywall, and the occasional weekend warrior. Lives in a 1947 Cape Cod that is a perpetual work-in-progress.