Your First Toolbox on a DI Budget
Okay, real quick, before we talk about anything you need to fix. Let's talk about what's actually in your toolbox right now.
If you're like most people in this room, it's either empty, or it's got one Phillips screwdriver and a hammer your dad gave you that's technically a "trim hammer" and you don't know why that matters. That's fine. That's normal. That's where I started too.
Here's the thing. You do not need a $200 drill to fix stuff in your house. You need maybe twelve tools, most of which cost less than lunch, and I'm mildly militant about where you get them.
Go on a DI run first
Not Home Depot. Not Costco, even though you're already there for the thing you actually needed. DI. Deseret Industries, the thrift store. I found a full set of good screwdrivers there for four bucks once, went home, texted a picture to my group chat like I'd found gold. I still use those screwdrivers. They work exactly as well as new ones.
Tools don't wear out from sitting in a drawer for twenty years before some family donated them. A hand tool is a hand tool. The only stuff I'd think twice about buying used is anything with a battery, because you don't know how much life is left in it, and stuff with a blade, because who knows what it's been through. Everything else, buy used, learn what you actually reach for, and upgrade later once you know your own habits.
What actually goes in the box
Here's your starter list. Don't overthink this, don't buy more than this yet:
- Phillips and flathead screwdrivers, a couple sizes each
- Adjustable wrench
- Needle-nose pliers and regular pliers
- A hammer
- Tape measure
- Level (we'll talk about reading these later, I still second-guess mine)
- Utility knife
- Putty knife, the cheap flexible kind
- Allen wrench set
- Headlamp or a good flashlight, because you will always be fixing something under a sink in the dark
- Painter's tape
- A tube of caulk and a caulk gun
That's it. That's the list. You will slowly add to this over the next year as you run into stuff, and that's exactly how it should go. You don't need the wrench for the job you don't have yet.
Buy the cheap consumables new
Tools, go used. But a few things you actually want fresh out of the package: sandpaper, caulk, wood filler, drywall mud, mesh tape. These are the ten-dollar items that make or break a repair, and they're cheap enough that there's no reason to gamble on old stuff drying out in someone's garage for a decade.
Speaking of mesh tape. I want to tell you about the time I didn't have any.
I had a hole in my drywall, about the size of a golf ball, and I was out of mesh tape and did not want to make another trip to the store. So I did the dumbest possible workaround. I balled up a paper towel, stuffed it in the hole, and smeared spackle over the top like that was a real solution. It looked fine. I was proud of it for about three days. Then it fell straight out of the wall, spackle and all, and I had the same hole again except now there was a sad little paper towel wad sitting on my floor as evidence.
Buy the tape. It's four dollars. Don't be me.
The tools you can wait on
A drill is genuinely useful and I'm not telling you to skip it forever. But it's the one thing I'd say wait on the used route a little more carefully, or wait to buy at all until you have a specific job that needs one. Same with anything specialty, like a pipe wrench or a stud finder. You'll know when you need it because you'll be standing in your house needing it. That's the moment to go find it, used if you can, new if you can't.
One more thing before you go shopping
Go find your water main shutoff valve right now. Tonight, if you haven't already. Not when you're standing in a wet garage in your socks trying to remember if it's the one by the water heater or the one outside by the hose bib. I found out the hard way, mid-leak, and it is not a fun way to learn your own house.
Take a picture of it on your phone if you have to. Just know where it is before you need it.
Before next time: Do your DI run if you haven't yet, and bring whatever you find to class, even if it's weird or incomplete. Half the fun is comparing what everybody dug up.