50-80% of the shit you find at Home Depot for "homeowners" is halfassed bullshit. You can do it but it will suck. It might last long enough to suck for the next guy, but probably not. Physical patching, like drywall and stuff, will work if you do it badly it will just look ugly. Plumbing and electrical will either work 100% or fail eventually. It's worth treating that stuff as if you intend for it to succeed beyond your wildest imaginations. Nearly every task a home handyman wishes to accomplish can be accomplished by a high school dropout with half an hour of training. The exceptions are finish-related, such as tile, flooring, drywall and cabinetry. For finish-related tasks, most people can do a job that looks like it was done by a high school dropout with half an hour of training. In general, the difference between an onerous job and an easy job, between a tedious job and a joyful job, is task-specific tooling. If you are not doing this job regularly, and if you do not want to do this job regularly, it's probably in your interests to hire someone who does this job regularly. There is no aspect of plumbing or electrical that you can't handle yourself. The tools are cheap. However, if it looks like something you'll screw up, trust your gut. Any doofus can put in an outlet or a faucet but my father in law the doofus put in a dishwasher 18 years ago and it's eaten three dishwasher pumps in 15 months. I just spent $1100 un-doofusing it. Because I don't want to learn the intricacies of Johnson Ts, I don't like crawling under my house, and I don't work with 2" PVC pipe very often. A push mower and a power mower require about the same amount of effort to push. The push mower won't mow stubborn dandelions. But if you use a push mower every couple weeks you don't have to buy a power mower. There is no aspect of your plumbing that you can't make worse with Drano. If there's a girl in the house, the shower drain will clog. get used to cleaning it out. Don't expect thanks, just do it. The most likely thing to cost you a new kitchen floor (and probably subfloor) is your ice maker. PUDDLES ARE NEVER GOOD. The thing most likely to send you to the hospital is the ladder. Don't fuck around getting on or off the roof. The second thing most likely to send you to the hospital is your circular saw. The thing most likely to kill you is a combination of ladders and overhead power lines. Cordless power tools, on the other hand, will likely limit your injuries to urgent care and stitches. Keep your yard tidier than the least tidy yard in the neighborhood and don't be the last person to take down your Christmas decorations. Your neighbors are all judging someone and if it's not you, you might even get to know them. Get out a piece of paper. Draw a map on it with your house in the middle. As the opportunity comes up, get the names of everyone in the house next to you on either side, across the street, and if possible on the other side of the fence. You will meet them once or twice a year and if you can remember their names it will go so much more smoothly. Trees and bushes respond well to pruning in the fall or early winter. Cut at an angle so that water can't pool on the cut. Never buy Sherwin Williams paint. Never leave masking tape on for more than a day or two tops. Own many tape measures. Own many sharpies. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that you can never find the sharpie if you're holding the tape measure and vice versa. The only antidote is multiple pairs so that you can overcome quantum entanglement. You don't need a pressure washer? But having a shitty electric pressure washer will allow you to clean things you didn't think were dirty. Having a powerful pressure washer will allow you to overspend on a tool you don't really need. Always take the advice of fellow homeowners with a grain of salt.Any advice or tips for new homeowners?
Congratulations on the new home! And yeah... buy a ladder. One of the "a-shaped" ones that extends, like the Little Giant. And buy a set of battery powered tools. I like Milwaukee. I've built entire buildings with this simple kit. And don't use ANY screw other than a star-drive. There's just no reason to use anything else as a fastener. This kit is a good starter, with a range of useful sizes. And get a home-owner's book. I have the Fix It Yourself Manual, which makes any kind of typical home repair pretty simple and straightforward. There's something about having a book open to the right page, when you are under the kitchen sink trying to figure out how to fix the garbage disposal, that beats a phone or tablet with a YouTube video every single time...
Couple of key things: 1. Camout. This is when the bit jumps out of the head of the screw, and scratches/damages the surface you are working on. It can also strip the screw head. It's almost impossible with star-head screws, but very common with cross-head (Phillips Head) and straight (flat head) screws. 2. Torque/Shear. A lot of people use drywall screws for everything. But it is easy to spin the head off the top of the screw (and leave the shaft in the wood) while mounting your cabinets on the wall. And those cabinets might fall down because drywall screws (and most phillips head screws) don't have much sheer strength, so the weight of the cabinet pressing down on the "neck" of the screw can shear the head off, and your cabinet falls off the wall with all your dishes in it. Star-head screws are (almost universally) made of tougher stuff with head and neck designs that are specifically made to stop shearing and carry those lateral loads better. 3. Standardization. No matter what you choose, standardize on it throughout your house. It is HUGELY annoying to have to use three different bits to remove a single light fixture. If you standardize and just keep one type of screw on hand, you will make and fix things with that one standard type of screw, and your life will get progressively easier over the duration of homeownership. (Related: I just spent an entire day going through my dad's workshop with him, and sorting a dozen different types of nails into a dozen different glass jars, and a dozen different screw types into a dozen other jars... and this man can't even turn a screwdriver anymore, due to age-issues with his wrist joints.) 4. Bits. Star-head screws always come with fresh bits in the box of screws. So you never need to buy another bit, and the ones you have are always fresh and new. It's a little thing, but... it's a big thing. Finally, check out Steve Ramsey on YouTube. He does basic woodworking tutorials, and is great. This is his one about screws that got me on board with this way of thinking:
Don't worry about it overmuch. If you need screws, it will be kinda hard to buy anything else. The philips-head screws are only cheaper in lb quantities while anything a normal homeowner might want is pretty much "proprietary star drive with proprietary drive head in marvelous snap package at price point that seems attractive". Bear in mind that if you're actually loosening and tightening things by hand, star drive are a pain in the ass because if you don't have the exact right driver you can't accomplish shit whereas if you've got a phillips then there's probably four screwdrivers in the drawer that will mostly work.Whats the benefit of star-drive screws?
I run Black & Decker Matrix. They are mediocre versions of every single tool, but they also cost like $40. I have no reasonable need for a zip saw, but I have reasonable need for a $40 zip saw. I use a router about every other year, but every other year I have a $40 router. And the stuff is so cheap and packaged so weirdly that I have like three drill motors, three drills, an impact driver and five batteries. Including some that are supposed to work my weed whacker but will keep a jigsaw going forever. I actually use the dumb thing to compress the air in my casting chamber. Ostensibly that's so I can fill my wife's tires when she has a slow leak but you put a Schrader valve on stuff and suddenly it's useful.
Interesting device and solution! I like it. I just happened to get a great deal on the basic Miwaukee drill/driver set with two batteries and a charger. After that, getting any other tool that fit the same batteries just made sense... and the tools have held up really well over years of moderate use. (I tend to go building-crazy for a couple of months, and then build nothing for several months.)
Yeah you buy into a battery system more than anything else. I find that most power tools suffer from "dive knife syndrome" - the only thing you need it for is to tap the pommel on your tank to get the attention of other divers and mmmmmmmmmaybe use it to pry something up or cut something you're tangled in. Ideally it's got a blunt tip and is bright yellow or orange so that when you drop it you can find it. Yet most dive knives, because they're bought by weekend warriors who think they're Navy SEALs, look like this: The average consumer drill looks and acts like something you would use to single-handedly assemble a motorcycle crate with, when really, 90% of its functionality is swag hooks for your wife's fuchsia baskets.
And also whether you should use it. In the United States it's extremely common to have a shutoff valve for the house, and another shutoff valve for the water company. The water company's valve has been used every single time someone moves out of the house, and is maintained by the water company. The house valve was turned on once when the house was new, and then turned off thirty years later, at which point it promptly broke and was replaced, and it's ready to do it again.
If you are going to do anything to your yard, don't do it piecemeal. Don't tear out those bushes and in a few months cut down a tree. Tear it all out, leave yourself with as much of a blank slate as you can. If you don't love something in your yard get rid of it and get rid of everything at one time.