Buy Few Tools, Buy Them Once

The standard first purchase is a boxed set with a hundred and something pieces, a chrome finish, and a moulded plastic tray. Six months later, four of the tools have been used, two of the screwdriver tips are rounded off, and the pliers leave marks on everything they touch.

The alternative is to buy a short list of tools individually, spending the same money on far fewer items. Tools bought this way tend to outlast the house. The list below is roughly in order of how often it comes out of the drawer.

The Core Dozen

A claw hammer, around 450g (16oz). Heavier is not better for household work; you want control, not force. A fibreglass or wooden handle absorbs shock better than a bare steel one. This is the tool most people already have and most people buy badly — a cheap hammer with a loose head is genuinely dangerous.

A screwdriver set, or better, a ratcheting driver with bits. You need slotted and Phillips in at least two sizes each, and increasingly Pozidriv and Torx as well, because modern fittings use them. A driver handle with a magnetic bit holder and a small case of bits replaces eight separate screwdrivers and fits in a drawer.

The important detail nobody mentions: use the right size tip. Almost all damaged screw heads are the result of a tip one size too small spinning inside the slot. If it does not seat with a positive click, it is the wrong bit.

Adjustable spanner, 200mm. One is enough for most homes. Turn it so the load goes against the fixed jaw, not the sliding one, and tighten the jaw properly against the nut before pulling — a loose adjustable spanner rounds off fittings in a single movement.

Water pump pliers (also called slip-joint or channel-type pliers). The genuinely useful plumbing tool. The offset jaws grip pipes, tap bodies, and large nuts that nothing else will hold. Buy a 250mm pair.

Combination pliers and a pair of long-nose pliers. For gripping, bending, and pulling out things that have no head left.

A utility knife with snap-off or replaceable blades. Change the blade far more often than feels reasonable. A blunt knife needs force, and force is how people cut themselves.

A tape measure, 5m, with a locking blade. The lock matters more than the length.

A spirit level, 600mm. Short torpedo levels are convenient and lie about anything longer than themselves. A 600mm level will hang shelves, pictures, and rails honestly. A phone app is fine for a rough check and not for a job you will look at every day.

A cordless combi drill, 12V or 18V. The single tool that changes what is possible in a house. A 12V drill is lighter, cheaper, and enough for wood, plasterboard, and the occasional wall plug; an 18V with hammer function handles masonry properly. Buy the battery platform you can add to later, not the cheapest kit in the shop.

A drill bit set covering wood, metal (HSS), and masonry. Masonry bits have a distinctive wider tip and are the ones that will not cut brick if you use the wrong ones.

A torch — head torch or a decent handheld. Every problem in a house is under something, behind something, or in a cupboard.

Safety glasses. Cheap, and the one item on this list that protects something irreplaceable. Wear them for anything that drills, cuts, hammers into masonry, or involves anything under pressure.

The Consumables Drawer

Tools do the work; consumables are what the job actually needs at nine on a Sunday evening.

  • Wall plugs and screws in an assorted box — this covers most of what gets hung on a wall
  • Plasterboard fixings, which are a different thing entirely from ordinary wall plugs and covered below
  • PTFE tape for threaded plumbing joints
  • Masking tape, duct tape, and electrical tape
  • Sandpaper, a couple of grades
  • Filler for walls and decorator’s caulk for gaps and edges
  • Wood glue and a general-purpose adhesive
  • A tube of clear silicone sealant and a cheap sealant gun
  • Assorted washers and tap washers
  • Cable ties, string, and a pencil that lives with the tools

Wall Plugs: The Thing Everyone Gets Wrong

A screw driven straight into a wall holds in timber and holds in nothing else. Everything else needs a fixing matched to what the wall is made of, and the failure mode of getting this wrong is a shelf of books on the floor.

Work out what the wall is. Knock on it. A solid, dull sound is masonry — brick, block, or concrete. A hollow, drum-like sound with occasional solid points is a stud wall: plasterboard over timber or metal uprights, usually spaced regularly.

In masonry, drill with a masonry bit on hammer setting, use the plastic plug that matches the screw gauge, blow the dust out of the hole, and push the plug in flush. The hole must be the depth of the plug or a little more, or the plug pushes back out as the screw goes in.

In plasterboard, an ordinary plug is useless — plasterboard is compressed gypsum with paper on both faces and has almost no grip. The options, roughly in ascending strength: self-drive spiral anchors for light items, plastic or metal expanding anchors for medium loads, and spring toggles or gravity toggles for anything heavy. Toggles need a larger hole and cannot be removed without leaving one, but they hold properly.

Best of all in a stud wall: find the stud and screw straight into the timber. A magnet dragged across the wall finds the screws holding the board on, which are in the studs. Anything heavy — a TV bracket, a wall cabinet, a handrail — should be on studs or masonry, never on board fixings alone.

Before you drill any wall, check what is behind it. Cables usually run vertically and horizontally from sockets and switches, and pipes run to radiators and bathrooms. A combined cable and pipe detector costs very little and is worth using every time, particularly directly above or below a socket, where cable is nearly guaranteed.

What to Add Later, Not Now

A hand saw, a chisel or two, a socket set, a stud detector, a multi-tool, a hand planer, a stepladder that is not a chair. Each of these becomes obvious the first time you need it, and buying them in advance mostly fills a cupboard.

Where the Tools Live

The last practical point: keep them together, keep them somewhere you can reach without moving anything, and put them back. A toolkit spread across three rooms is functionally no toolkit at all, and the reason small repairs turn into large ones is almost always that starting the job took twenty minutes before anything got fixed.