Vol. XXVI · No. 04 • Workshop Almanac
— The Everyday Handyman —
Est. MMXIX
Vol. XXVI · No. 04 • Workshop Almanac
Est. MMXIX
Tool wisdom, hard-earned tips, and a directory of trades you can trust — gathered, weighed, and set in type for the everyday handyman.
§ I — Index
No. 01
No. 02
No. 03
No. 04
§ II — Field Investigation
Craftsman 3-Drawer Portable Steel Tool Chest with Ball-Bearing Drawer Slides
Milwaukee 46-Inch High-Capacity 16-Drawer Steel Tool Chest & Rolling Cabinet
§ III — The Starter Kit
Every home eventually asks for one. A loose hinge. A picture that won’t hang straight. A drip under the kitchen sink at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night. The question isn’t whether you’ll need tools — it’s whether the ones you have will actually do the job when the moment comes.
Most starter tool kits sold in big-box stores are a polite lie. Twenty-eight pieces in a plastic case, half of them too soft to drive a single screw without stripping the head. We’ve spent years assembling and dismantling these kits, and the truth is simple: you need fewer tools than the marketing suggests, but each one needs to be honest.
Below is the kit we’d give a friend moving into their first house. Not an exhaustive list. Not a sponsored one. Just the ten pieces that quietly handle ninety percent of what a home will ever ask of you.
No. 01
A 16-ounce claw hammer with a smooth face and a curved claw. Steel head, hickory or fiberglass handle, well-balanced in the hand. One hammer, one lifetime.
No. 02
Magnetic-tip Phillips and flathead screwdrivers in the four sizes that matter. Hardened steel shafts and comfortable grips — the set that ends stripped screws for good.
No. 03
A 25-foot tape measure with a stiff standout blade, locking thumb brake, and riveted end hook. Measure twice, cut once — every project in the house starts here.
No. 04
An 18V cordless drill/driver with two batteries and a keyless chuck. It drills pilot holes, drives screws, and mixes paint — the workhorse of every home repair.
No. 05
A 10-inch adjustable wrench with smooth jaw action. Compression fittings, supply lines, furniture bolts — one wrench, a hundred plumbing and assembly jobs.
No. 06
Slip-joint, needle-nose, and locking pliers. Gripping, pulling, twisting, and clamping — the three extra hands you always wished you were born with.
No. 07
A retractable utility knife with a rubber grip and a strip of spare blades. It opens boxes, scores drywall, trims shims, and sharpens your carpenter pencil.
No. 08
A 24-inch box-beam spirit level. Shelves, picture frames, appliances, fence posts — nothing in a house ever forgives being hung crooked.
No. 09
An electronic stud finder with live-wire AC detection. Find the wood, miss the wires — the difference between a solid TV mount and a drywall disaster.
No. 10
A 15-inch general-purpose handsaw with hardened, induction-sharpened teeth. For all the cuts too small to justify dragging out a power saw.
That is the entire starter kit. Ten pieces. Maybe two hundred dollars at the lower end, six hundred at the upper. You can keep adding — a circular saw, a multimeter, a nail gun, an oscillating multi-tool — but you do not need to start there. Start with ten honest tools. Add the next one when a job demands it. The kit grows the way a craftsman does: one need at a time.
§ IV — Directory
No. 01
Find one near you →
No. 02
Find one near you →
No. 03
Find one near you →
No. 04
Find one near you →
No. 05
Find one near you →
No. 06
Find one near you →
No. 07
Find one near you →
No. 08
Find one near you →
No. 09
Find one near you →
No. 10
Find one near you →
No. 11
Find one near you →
No. 12
Find one near you →
§ V — Judgement Calls
The internet is full of confident strangers telling you that you can do anything. You cannot. Some jobs are a Saturday afternoon and a careful YouTube tutorial. Others are a permit, a license, and a tradesperson with insurance. Knowing which is which is the most underrated skill in homeownership.We are not gatekeeping. Half of what handymen and contractors do is genuinely teachable, and a determined homeowner with patience and the right tools can pull it off. But the other half involves load-bearing walls, gas lines, and the kind of mistake you cannot undo with a second coat of paint. The question is never “can I do this?” It is always “should I do this?” Below is how we decide.
Is it permitted?
If your municipality requires a building permit, an electrical permit, or a plumbing permit for the work, the answer is almost always: hire a licensed pro. Permitted work creates a paper trail that protects your home’s resale value. Unpermitted work haunts a sale.
Is it dangerous?
Gas lines, mains electricity, structural walls, and steep roofs punish mistakes in injuries, not dollars. If the job touches any of them, put down the tool and pick up the phone — a licensed electrician, plumber, or roofer costs less than an emergency room.
Is it reversible?
A bad paint edge can be re-cut. A patched drywall hole can be re-patched. But a botched waterproofing job, a mis-wired circuit, or a cracked drain line hides behind the wall and compounds quietly. If you cannot undo it cheaply, do not be the one to do it.
Is it worth your Saturday?
Add up the specialty tools you would have to buy, the trips to the hardware store, and the hours of your weekend. If the total beats a handyman’s invoice, hire it out — and spend the day on the work that rewards your own two hands.
Hanging shelves, mirrors, and curtain rods. Patching small drywall holes. Painting interior walls, trim, and doors. Caulking around tubs, sinks, and windows. Replacing a faucet aerator or showerhead. Swapping out a light fixture when you can shut the breaker safely. Tightening a wobbly toilet seat. Replacing cabinet hardware. Building flat-pack furniture. Weatherstripping a door. Re-grouting a small bathroom backsplash. Cleaning out gutters. Replacing furnace filters. Touching up scuffed paint. Hanging a TV mount on a wood-stud wall. Sanding and refinishing a single piece of furniture. Changing the smoke alarm batteries — and then the smoke alarms themselves, every ten years. These jobs reward care more than expertise. The first one will take twice as long as it should. The second will take half. By the fifth, you’ll wonder why you ever paid someone.
Anything touching the main electrical panel or service lines. Gas appliance installation, gas line repairs, and suspected gas leaks. Structural changes to load-bearing walls. Roof repairs and full roof replacement. Main sewer line clogs and drain excavation. Whole-house repiping. HVAC installation and refrigerant work. Asbestos, lead paint, and mold remediation. Foundation cracks that keep widening. Tree removal near the house or power lines. Window and exterior door replacement above the first floor. Anything that needs a permit, a license, or scaffolding. These are not jobs where the first attempt just takes twice as long — they are jobs where the first mistake costs ten times as much. Respect the trades. That is what the directory is for.
Use our trades directory above to find a vetted professional in any of the twelve categories we cover. Read the reviews. Get three quotes, never one. Always ask for a license number. And remember the oldest rule in homeownership: the cheapest contractor is rarely the cheapest decision.
§ VI — Field Notes
You don’t need a garage full of equipment to handle most household repairs — you need the right ten tools
Before the cold sets in, an afternoon of preventive maintenance can save you from frozen pipes, roof leaks, and heating
From doorknob dents to nail holes to fist-sized accidents, drywall damage is inevitable — and almost always repairable without replacing
A door that drags, sticks, or won’t latch is one of the most common — and most fixable — household
Swapping a light switch or replacing an outlet cover is well within reach for most homeowners. Rewiring a panel is
A dripping faucet or running toilet can waste hundreds of gallons of water a month and quietly inflate your bill.
§ VII — The Method
Most tool reviews on the internet were written by someone who has never held the tool. We know because we have read them. They paraphrase the manufacturer’s spec sheet, lift a few customer reviews, sprinkle in some keywords, and publish before lunch.
We do not. Every tool we feature on Handyman Guides has been pulled out of its packaging and put through a real project. Every tip we publish has been tested, broken, and tested again. Every trade in our directory has been vetted against published licensing, real customer reviews, and where possible a phone call. This is not a content site that happens to be about tools. It is a workshop that happens to publish.
Below is exactly how we work. Read it once and you will know what every star, every rank, and every “Best Overall” tag on this site is built on.
The thing that decides whether a tool lasts five years or fifteen. We look at the material of the housing, the feel of the moving parts, the tolerances on the threads, the heft in the hand. Cheap is obvious within thirty seconds. Quality reveals itself over weeks of real use.
Spec sheets lie; sawdust does not. We run every drill, saw, compressor, and generator through the same real projects — hardwood, framing lumber, rusted bolts — and record what the tool actually does, not what the box promises.
Weight, balance, grip, trigger feel, noise, vibration. A tool you dread picking up is a tool that stays in the chest. The best tool is the one your hands are still happy to hold an hour into the job.
Not the cheapest, not the fanciest — the most tool per dollar. We weigh street price against build, performance, and lifespan, and we say plainly when a budget model outworks a premium badge.
Warranty terms, spare-part availability, battery ecosystems, and how the manufacturer treats you after the receipt fades. Buying a tool is a relationship with a company — and some companies ghost.
We earn money two ways. Affiliate commissions when you buy a tool we have recommended through our links. Display advertising on certain pages of the site. That is it. There is no third revenue stream we are quiet about.
We do not accept payment for reviews. We do not take “sponsored placements” in our buying guides. No manufacturer has ever paid us to bump a product up the rankings, and no manufacturer ever will. The day that changes is the day this site stops being worth reading, and we know it.
Some tools are sent to us by manufacturers for testing. We accept them. We test them on the same five axes as everything else. If they do not make the grade, we do not review them. If they do, the affiliate commission goes to the link the same way it would for any product on the site.
We update our buying guides at least twice a year. New models replace old ones. Tools we recommended five years ago may no longer be the best in their category, and when that happens, we say so. An old review with a “Last updated” date from three years ago is not a review you can trust. If you ever spot a recommendation on this site that no longer holds up, write to us — we read every email. The almanac is a living document. Set in type, but never set in stone.
§ VIII — The House Style
Handyman Guides exists to make the right tool, the right fix, and the right tradesperson easier to find — without the noise of the modern internet. Our reviews are written by people who’ve actually held the tool. Our tips are tested before they’re typed.
We don’t believe in listicles, SEO mush, or 10-things-you-need-now. We believe in honest tools, careful work, and the quiet satisfaction of a job done properly.
Handyman Guides · Vol. XXVI
One email, every Sunday. New tool reviews, the best tip of the week, and a single recommendation from the editors. No clutter.
