For example, I think I’ll need a ladder. I’m looking for any suggestions from tools to security cameras, or whatever else you can think of. What should every new home owner consider getting?
Edit: in Canada btw, somewhere that gets a lot of snow in the winter
A smart water monitor/shutoff valve.
Some part of your plumbing breaking can cause your house to flood, ruining your possessions and costing you tens of thousands in repairs. Plus a huge headache to deal with even if insurance covers it all.
Smart water monitors will notice when water is pouring into your house and automatically shut the water off.
The water softener & filter in our house has built in monitoring & alerted me when one of our toilets wouldn’t stop running. Very helpful feature.
Plumbers tape. Electrical tape. Wood glue. Colored markers that match wood flooring. A fire extinguisher is a good thing to have on hand
I found the ladders that can turn into scaffolds to be of immense use. Also start going to every yard, estate, and garage sale you can find as there are often tools and ladders and all sorts of stuff being sold cheap.
Also pawn shops are great for used tools
Toilet plunger, basic cold medicine, first aid kit, fire extinguisher and fire blanket
This guy knows how to party!
I think there’s a lot of great ideas in here, but I’d start with the stuff that, when you need it, you need it now.
Something I didn’t see mentioned yet was a wrench to turn your water off at the line that goes into your house. If you’re on a well, then whatever tools you’d need to turn that valve off. If you spring a bad leak you want to shut that off asap
A few other things that seem like good things to have BEFORE you need them
- Plunger and drain snake (Good to have both, sometime the plunger won’t cut it, but it’s much easier to use a plunger if that’s all you need)
- First aid kit
- Fire extinguisher
- Carbon monoxide/smoke detectors
- Spare keys, give them to people you trust or hide them really well so you don’t have to break in if you get locked out
- A big bucket for leaks, mopping, etc
- ladder
- Generator if you can afford it
- Emergency bag with food, water, flashlight, spare batteries, cheap phone, list of numbers, map, first aid kit, etc
Those are the kinds of things I’d look to buying first since anything else you can just go get when you need it.
Also, a small wet/dry vac!
Take a bunch of pictures of everything. You’ll probably want to look at them somewhere down the road and it’s interesting to have empty photos everywhere.
TOOLS (none of this is yard stuff, I won’t really go into that)
-Tape measure
-finishing (smooth face) hammer
-a drill kit. This can be pricey but I wouldn’t recommend getting a really cheap one unless you must, but it’s ok if you do to start and don’t abuse it. Crap and decker is fine. You’ll want a basic drill bit set that has Phillips, flat head, and a bit extension. You can get little bricks of cheap drill bits off Amazon, they work fine but they won’t last if you strip them a bunch, which is fine because they’re cheap.
-headlamp
-adjustable wrench. If you want to get a set of wrenches in standard/metric, go for it, they’re cheap. An adjustable kind of sucks but it works most of the time but sometimes the bulk won’t let you really turn it.
-Allen wrench set, metric and standard
-a basic screwdriver set for when your drill is too bulky or you don’t want to put too much torque on stuff
-a tool bag. You can use anything but I like an electricians bag with a bunch of small pockets. REALLY handy.
-an extendable sliding ladder is great for in the house and stores easy. A step ladder will get you pretty much anywhere in the house though, and I wouldn’t use an extendable one for outside. Recommend if you want something for outside you get an A frame ladder. Remember you can always rent stuff like that from home Depot or whatever so if you’re only going to use it once a year you don’t need to buy a 20’ ladder.
-not necessary, but a torpedo level, hack saw (to cut weird metal and plastic stuff every now and then), a stud finder (you don’t need to buy anything fancy, I use a little strong magnet with a strip of cloth that I drag across the wall, it sticks to nails on studs that are at the joints of Sheetrock), an an inexpensive multimeter, a set of wood drill bits and a socket set.
Anything else buy as you need.
OTHER STUFF (I’m leaving out basic stuff that you’ll pick up naturally)
-FIRE EXTINGUISHERS. Recommend at least two, if not three. Kitchen, garage, upstairs at a minimum. And DON’T get some crappy 5 or 10 lb ones they will get you a couple seconds of spray. A fire blanket is good for the kitchen too if you like to deep deep fry or you’re a crazy whirlwind cook.
-you mention cameras in your OP, I really hate recommending anything cloud based but it’s what’s available for most without effort. I think most important is a doorbell camera, helps mitigate porch pirates and helps with deliveries.
-if you get a lot of snow I’d recommend a snow blower. Also, depending on your roof you’ll want to make sure you have some way to get snow off your roof when it piles up. A foot of snow across your roof is heavy and if it piles up more you risk roof damage.
Water intrusion and mold are now your greatest common enemies. Guard against them with extreme prejudice or risk major headaches and costs.
Thrift stores are good places for picture frames so you can start decorating. Make sure to hang stuff on studs if they’re even just a bit heavy, drywall doesn’t hold weight for shit. There’s a ton of different types of drywall anchors, many require drilling but some don’t. There’s S shaped wire hook thingies that you can push through drywall and hang lighter stuff like bigger pictures off a stud without leaving a big hole.
People like floor rugs in the wintertime, I don’t really care though and rugs can be surprisingly expensive and hard to clean. You can rent carpet cleaners, I recommend doing that instead of buying a crappy one for home, using them sucks and they do a shit job unless you get a REALLY good one which is stupid expensive, just rent them.
Don’t wear shoes in the house! Fuck. Have a shoes off house, it keeps things clean and doesn’t wear down carpet nearly as much. Wear slippers if you want but just don’t, and ask guests to remove their shoes. Some people think it’s weird but I don’t care don’t wear shoes in my house, take them off or fuck off. That being said it’s really inconvenient for workers to wear them so I have a couple sets of heavy duty washable shoe covers to offer people that come to service my stuff.
Do NOT neglect maintenance. Set up a schedule in your phone calendar for AC/heating, water tank, septic if you have it, whatever. AC twice a year if you have it, furnace annually, water tank annually if you have normal hardness water or maybe 2x a year if you have really hard water, chimney inspection and cleaning if you have one (chimney fires bad). Also you’ll want to clean your dryer duct every year or two (lint fires bad) and you can do it yourself if you have a drill and order one of the cleaning kits with the rods. A leaf blower can help also (from inside out, I hope that’s obvious lol).
I personally have shifted to battery operated lawn tools like lawn mower and leaf blower. They’re not as powerful but if you have a small yard they’re a good trade off vs always trying to fuck with small engines.
Good luck!
Lot of good suggestions.
I would add wet dry shop vac for cleaning big messes of all kinds.
Toilet plunger. Get it before you need it
Get stuff from garage sales!! A rake, hoe, shovel, hoses etc all that stuff is like 1 dollar at a lot of garage sales. No reason to go to a store and pay many times more. I got a snowblower for 25 dollars once that ran fine. Used it a few years till it needed work and then sold it for 50.
Get a leaf blower for cleaning gutters, its worth it.
Get a bunch of wood screws and a drill. You’ll need it for repairs. Wood filler too.
Drywall supplies are handy too, scrapers, sanders, a lot of this you can find at garage sales too.
Good advice, except a quarter inch 18 volt impact is way more useful. I use mine almost daily. Impact drivers drive and remove screws much better. In fact get a complete set of decent 18 volt tools. You will use the shit out of them.
except a quarter inch 18 volt impact is way more useful. I use mine almost daily. Impact drivers drive and remove screws much better.
If I only had to pick an impact or a drill, I’d actually choose the drill… Purely because impact drivers aren’t great for drilling. They’re better for driving screws, sure. But sometimes you just need to put a hole in something. And an impact driver will give you hell if you try to use it as a drill. A regular drill will be more versatile in that regard, because it can do both. So if I only had money for one, I’d choose the drill.
In fact get a complete set of decent 18 volt tools. You will use the shit out of them.
Yup, I agree completely. Even the cheap Ryobi stuff is fine for casual users. You only need the nice power tools if you’re in construction and plan on using them for 8 hours a day. Their One+ series of tools will be fine for 99% of homeowners. Ryobi had a really awful reputation for a long time, and they deserved it. But the brand got bought out, and now they’re manufactured in the same facilities that produce the (much more expensive) Milwaukee tools. Teardowns have shown that they use basically the same internals now (which makes sense, because no company wants to spend twice as much on two different types of components), just with a different plastic housing around them. The brand is still haunted by that old reputation, but these days their tools are actually fairly solid.
Get the big multipack of power tools, and maybe an extra battery if you plan on using them a lot. It’ll have 99% of what you’ll need, and the rest of your purchases will be focused on getting things to use with those tools; Bits, blades, sockets, etc…
Have to disagree about the versatility of the 1/4 inch impacts. The electricians who wired my house used impacts to drill holes. You can get a 1/4 inch drill chuck adapter for an impact too. A drill is a must have, but impacts drive screws better, hands down and loosen stubborn or rusty bolts that are impossible for ratchet wrenches. Also, if you spring for a complete set, get the brush-less tools - they are awesome.
Skip getting a drill. Go for a quarter inch impact. Better yet spring for a complete 18 volt, brushless set, including a hammer drill, recip saw, multi-tool and circular saw.
Water softener.
If your climate is dry in the winter, a whole home humidifier.
LUXE Bidet NEO 185 Plus: https://www.amazon.com/LUXE-Bidet-Plus-Next-Generation-Self-Cleaning/dp/B0B1H9W4D2
There are plenty of places where the water is plenty soft.
It depends what sort of person you are but if you ask me, battery powered impact screwdriver and basic hand tools like socket set, pliers, hex keys, plane, chisels, mallet and hammer, shovel, crowbar.
If you’re out in the sticks maybe keep some emergency rations and water, blankets, stove, firewood, lamps.
When getting tools, I always say people should start with the cheap shit. Go to Harbor Freight and get the biggest, cheapest “this has everything you’ll ever need” kit available. Chances are very good that you’ll never actually use most of the kit, but you’ll have it for emergencies.
Then when things break, replace them with the nice stuff. You don’t need to break the bank by getting the nice stuff right away. If shit breaks, it’s because you actually used it. So you know you’ll probably use it again in the future, and should get the nicer stuff to replace it.
Protip
When they start getting battery powered tools, pick a brand and stick with it so that after a few batteries, you can buy the tool only and save some $.
That said, I went with Hercules (harbor freight) for everything I keep in my van since it’s cheaper than big box brands and is good enough.
Haven’t seen this yet so I’ll suggest it, a fly swatter.
I’d ask in !dadforaminute@lemmy.world they’re great for advice on tools, safety, home management etc.
- If you get a lot of snow, a snow blower/thrower for the driveway. If your driveway is not paved, that will be a challenge, so, sheer pins to spare.
- A good battery charger and rechargeable batteries.
- An LED lantern, if/when you lose power.
- Candles
- Replace the smoke alarms unless you know their age
- Fire extinguisher
Subbed! Thanks for doing that
