I am, however, a homeowner, which gives me license to pretend to be one every now and then. Lately, that has entailed much drywall and joint compound, prybars and shovels for wet floor underlayment, a caulk gun, and more than a few broken utility blades. It has also found me making more than a few trips to the hardware stores in the area, and that always leaves me starring glossy-eyed at rows of shiny, happy, ready-to-be-purchased power tools!
I love power tools. I wish I needed one of everything at Home Depot, just to have them around, taking up space in the garage, being dusted off occasionally to do some minor project far beneath their limit of usefulness. Practicality, however, limits me to purchasing only the tools that I can make my wife believe I'll actually have a use for.
My first power tool was, of course, an electric screwdriver, back when I was an apartment dweller, and didn't need anything more than that. You need understand, though, that the electric screwdriver is the "gateway drug" of tools. It seems nice and harmless, but pretty soon, it doesn't do the job for you anymore, and you need something more to get you revved up: you need a reversible, variable-speed, cordless drill with forty-leven bits with which to drill and fasten your world into submission. It only gets worse from there.When you become a homeowner, you look around at the walls that you (and the bank) own, and you realize that you can put as many holes in them as you want, and nobody's going to complain. Until, that is, the walls are covered with more empty space than paint. Then you have to fix them. And while you've got the walls open, you see that the wiring isn't quite up to the standard of today's electronics-loaded life, or that there isn't any insulation in them, or that there is a mystery wire that doesn't seem to connect to anything. Every little thing escalates into something more than you expected.
For instance, take the example of our master bathroom. One day a few years ago, my wife decided that she was going to paint our bathroom. She asked me to take off the baseboards, so that she could pull off any wallpaper, and see what else needed to be done. When I started, several weeks had passed since she had first asked me, but that's not the point, the point is that when I put my catspaw prybar up to the wall to start gingerly pulling off the baseboard, it went right through the wallboard, which was mushy and soft, due to water from the shower penetrating through the grout around the tile, and turning the whole wall into a big spongy mess. I think the wallpaper was the only thing holding it up. Digging in further -- literally -- I found more water damage. Tiles started coming off WAY too easily, and wallboard crumbled off leaving exposed some rather damp wall studs. The floor covering was linoleum, but underneath was a particle board underlayment, and it was soaked and crumbling. The farther I got into it, the worse things got. In the outside wall, once I had pulled off the tile and wallboard, was termite damage.
What started out as painting finally became a near-complete gut of the bathroom. I took the shower walls and one of the interior walls down to the studs, in order to properly insulate the exterior walls, and sound-insulate the interior wall. We replaced the underlayment and put down vinyl tiles. We replaced the toilet, and had the shower and vanity counter done in a solid-surface product. We even replaced the lighting, exhaust fan, and toilet paper holder. And it only took us two years to finish everything.
With every home-improvement project escalation, the only solution is to buy a bigger hammer. Or maybe a power saw. Or an air compressor with a nail gun. At least, that's my solution. I suppose a rational person would say that the solution is to get it done with the tools you have, but what fun is that?
My tool collection has grown from one lowly electric screwdriver to include a circular saw, a compound miter saw, a rotary cutter (Roto-Zip), a rotary tool (Dremel), a 1-gallon, 100 PSI air compressor, with nail gun, and most recently, the most useful tool a home owner can have, a reciprocating saw, or "sawzall."
I don't think there is any way to overstate how useful a sawzall is. It's the appropriate tool for so many different jobs; it's even more versatile than a leafblower! Taking down a wall? SAWZALL! Removing a door jamb? SAWZALL! Tearing out an old deck? SAWZALL! Neighbor's tree hanging over your fence? SAWZALL! Neighbor's car parked over the property line on your side? SAWZALL! Day-old bread just a little too hard? SAWZALL! Nose hairs growing out of control? SAw... wait a minute, maybe just tweezers for that one, and save the sawzall for those bushy eyebrow hairs.Granted a sawzall isn't that great when you're building; it's mostly for tearing down. It isn't precise enough to cut lumber to length, or cutouts in plywood. I guess one of those chainsaw sculptor guys could probably make use of it pretty well, but that's not me; the last time I tried to sculpt anything, it was made out of salty dough, and though it was supposed to look like a relief map of the state of California, it ended up looking more like the cat threw up.
What I'd really like now is a router table. I don't have a need for it, really. I'd just like to round over the edges of various scraps of wood laying around the place, so nobody hurts themselves if they fall on them. I tried doing that with the sawzall, but it didn't go too well.
