Eight Non-Obvious But Essential Tools for New Homeowners

Last week Sage posted about hitting the one year anniversary of living in her home, and today we’re continuing the homeownership theme. Now that we’re seasoned homeowners and have absolutely everything figured out (they really should make a sarcastic font for us to use), we thought we’d share a list of the tools we’ve used most as in our homes.

There are already a lot of great posts out there about essential tools for DIY lovers, so we’ve focused on what would be useful for DIYers and non-DIYers alike.   We also skipped over the kinds of things that you’ll get in your basic toolkit (like a hammer, drill, level, etc). We’re highlighting the things we never really used (or even knew about) as renters, and then when we moved into our houses suddenly became must-have items.

We’re both sharing our top picks, since as we were brainstorming we discovered that we had some big differences — things Naomi said she used constantly and Sage had never used once, and vice versa. So in conclusion, we’re experts and clearly all these things are essential.

With that, let’s get started!

Sage’s Picks – Essential Tools for New Homeowners

This one is obvious as soon as you need it, but not necessarily before, and it’s something renters wouldn’t own: a nice tall extension ladder.

You don’t need just any ladder.  We relied on an old decrepit wooden step ladder that our seller had left behind when we first moved in, and it was terrifying.

Investing in a sturdy, extension ladder was so worth it, and we use it for lots of home maintenance tasks like cleaning clogs in the gutters from leaves or 8-inch thick blocks of ice:

Homeownership is so fun!

Ours extends to 16′ and is 8′ when collapsed, and cost us around $100 from Home Depot.

My second pick is a dremel.

I have a variable speed rotary dremel (affiliate link – read our policies), and it’s been so handy for a wide variety of purposes like cutting off deeply embedded anchors left in the walls by our seller:

Or grinding down a protruding plastic piece that prevented us from properly assembly our fancy new snow shovel (despite rave reviews, we hated the Snow Wolf shovel and returned it in favor of a snow blower since it fell apart the first time we used it — I swear it wasn’t related to the aforementioned dremel action).

I use my dremel all the time in the house for dealing with little issues, and highly recommend it.

Okay, the honest truth is that this whole post is basically a vehicle for me to warn you that YOU NEED TO BUY A ROOF RAKE. I had no idea what a roof rake was until suddenly we had 8-inch ice dams on our roof, the threat of water damage, and Amazon and all the local home improvement stores were totally sold out because we were having the snowiest winter in Boston’s history and everyone was going through the same ice dam disaster that we were. When we went to Home Depot in February to ask how to deal with our ice dams, the guy told us: “The only way to deal with ice dams is to prevent them. And to do that you need a roof rake. And you should have bought your roof rake in September, before we sold out.” Thanks, that’s super helpful. In September I was a naive new homeowner who knew nothing. Don’t repeat our mistakes, buy your roof rake now!

Instead what we did was a ridiculous experiment that involved filling pantyhose with calcium chloride and slinging them over our ice dams to try to melt channels in them (I swear, the internet told me it was a good idea).

That was not super effective, what we needed was a time machine and a roof rake. And now that I’ve lectured you about the roof rake, let me explain it. Basically, it’s a big hooked shovel on top of a long extendable pole:

When it snows, you’re supposed to use it to clear off your roof. Otherwise the snow will build up, and then start to melt through a combination of the sun and any heat escaping the top of your house from poor insulation. Then this melted water refreezes overnight, and it starts to build up on the edge of the roofline as massive icicles and “ice dams.”

These ice dams block subsequent melting snow from escaping your roof, so it has no choice but to start backing up under your shingles and potentially eventually leaking into your house. We were lucky not to have any water damage despite our massive ice dams, but it was terribly stressful and we won’t be caught off guard again this winter. We now own two roof rakes (we actually had my dad mail us one from Vermont, where there was less snow) and will be selling one to the highest bidder when the time comes. Get yours on Amazon NOW! (affiliate link – read our policies)

In a slightly less catastrophic vein, we also found a socket wrench to be something we never really understood until we needed one.

Fortunately we’d received one as a gift when we lived in our apartment, so when the time came we had it on hand. We literally never used it a single time as apartment-dwellers, and suddenly we find ourselves needing it all the time in our house.

We used it to remove the bolts when we were taking down our defunct satellite dish:

And to assemble a lot of the equipment in our home gym:

It’s been super helpful, and now I finally understand why my dad (a longtime homeowner) gave it to me so many years ago.

So that’s my list, let’s see what Naomi has for you!

Naomi’s Picks – Essential Tools for New Homeowners

For the first 27 years of my life, I didn’t even know what a caulking gun was.  Now, I feel like it is basically part of my arm.

We first got ours at the advice of our extraordinary contractor, who was entrusting his beautiful woodwork to two newbies to finish and paint.  I had no idea that the product even existed, and probably would have just gone ahead and painted, and been bummed out that the trim looked so bad with cracks showing everywhere.

I was blown away at how useful it is.  Paired with paint, caulk can make any poorly finished space look loads better. I really saw the power of this in my library, when I used tubes and tubes of the stuff to fill in the gapes and holes around the original woodwork.  This would have taken forever without a gun, but with the caulking gun I got it done in the span of one afternoon.

It is also useful for things like sealing around windows for better energy efficiency, and sealing around the sink and tub to prevent water damage – other great activities for new homeowners to try out!

By far, our best value outdoor tool is a big tarp.

A tarp doesn’t sound all that useful – it actually just sounds really cumbersome to move around and store – but, trust me, you need it for everything.  We’ve piled mulch on it in the driveway before spreading it in the yard… and covered piles of mulch with it to protect them from torrential rains because we hadn’t gotten around to spreading it yet.

We also use it in the fall to deal with leaf removal.  We just lay it down in front of a flower bed, rake the leaves out onto it, and then bundle them up and carry them off.  In our first year, before we knew any better, we cleared our entire yard using this method!

It is also incredibly useful for aesthetically arranging over stuff in your driveway to make your house look very classy:

But seriously, it is great for protecting and storing big projects like my workbench outside while they (or the room they will eventually go in) are still in progress.

After our first experience with autumn, we knew all too well just how many leaves the trees around our house make and drop every year.  We cleared them all that year by raking them onto a tarp, and then feeding them by hand through a shredder to reduce their size.  It was hard work and took a lot of time.

After that, Brad’s parents bought him an excellent gift: a mulching mower.  Unlike a regular mower, mulching mowers have special blades that chop up grass or other things (like leaves) really small so they fall between the blades of grass and nourish the lawn.  We’re so glad we didn’t invest in a regular mower before knowing about this option.

I’m sure there are a lot of good models out there, but ours is an electric one by Black and Decker (affiliate link – read our policies) and we love it.

 

Brad uses it from the spring through fall.  He mows the grass (obviously), but he can also use it to go over a thin layer of leaves to make them essentially disappear.  He generally does 3-4 passes each fall so that there aren’t too many leaves down at one time.  Then, all we have to do by hand is one round of raking to clear the mulched leaves from the high volume areas, and the tight corners and flower beds.  No more marathon raking weekends for us!

Another thing that I use all the time is an X-Acto Knife (affiliate link – read our policies).

Sure, this is something renters may have, as it is great for crafts and is just useful overall.  I’ve had one for a long time, but I hardly ever used mine until we got this house.  Then, when we were doing all those starter projects (like painting, quick fixes, and replacing lights) in the first months of home ownership, I feel like I was using it every day!

I use it after painting, for removing painters tape with a clean edge… or for cleaning up the edges when I fail to remove painters tape correctly.  I also use it to scrape paint off of glass, and to “cut free” anything that was painted in by the previous owners, like old outlets covers or light fixtures.  I’ve also used it to remove old caulk so that I can replace it with a fresh seam.

Getting a bit more advanced, I also used it to clear out damaged areas in wood trim or walls before patching and painting.

Like Sage’s dremel, somehow, I am always looking for this thing to solve whatever new problem I am having at the moment.  Not bad for only about $5!

Whether for general utility or a very important specialty purpose, all of these tools have helped us immensely as new homeowners.  It’s hard to believe we didn’t know about them before!

So what tools have you found helpful for homeownership that we should be sure to spread the word about?

(Sharing at Create It Thursday, Two Uses Tuesday, Think and Make Thursday, Remodelaholic, Thrifty Decor Chick’s October Before and After, and Tip me Tuesday)