At present, it is quite easy to find a company or private owners to carry out repair or finishing work in your own apartment. Nevertheless, a fairly large number of people do such work on their own.
This is dictated, of course, primarily by the goal of reducing the financial costs of repairing or decorating the premises. After all, if we take into account the fact that the cost of carrying out the work is on average equal to the cost of the finishing material, the repair is 2 times more expensive than the purchased materials. Well, if you want to make an exclusive, unusual design and decoration - the prices can be generally sky-high.
The second important factor is the quality of the work carried out. The fact is that employees very often tritely violate the technology of fastening, installation, etc.
This is done in order to reduce the time of work and earn the due money in a shorter period. In some cases, builders and repairers generally throw away some of the work (usually "hidden") and save both time and materials.
They do this in cases where there is no or weakened control over the work and it is impossible to check whether this stage has been completed or not subsequently. For example, when installing partitions or a plasterboard ceiling, they should have laid a layer of insulation, not steel - they installed the partitions, puttied them and finished it - it’s quite difficult to check if they have insulation - you won’t pick the walls. And they took the money for laying the insulation and took the insulation itself - a double benefit for them.
Completed finishing work, including finishing, also often does not differ in quality - and the wallpaper can be glued crookedly and the laminate is poorly laid and the doors are somehow delivered as they are. So people carry out repairs on their own according to the principle - if you want everything to be done well, do it yourself. For yourself, you will do it neatly and beautifully, although not as quickly as hired workers.
By the way, poor-quality finishing and renovation of an apartment can be encountered, both by hiring a covenant, and by ordering work in a reputable company. But the speech in our article will not be about the workers, but about the tools that you will need when carrying out repairs or finishing the apartment on your own.
If you decide to carry out major or even cosmetic repairs yourself, then the number of tools you need can be quite large. As a rule, these are hand tools, including electric ones. The more the latter, the more convenient and faster it is to work.
And now let's list everything that you may need for various jobs and we will start with small tools, which are often not considered tools by many.
We tried to divide the instruments into several groups, and since the same instrument may be suitable for different groups, we mentioned it only once so as not to repeat ourselves.
small tool
1. Pencil - you heard right. You can't make repairs without a pencil. It is needed constantly - write down, draw, mark.
2. Roulette - measure. It is better to use a tape measure 5 meters long for finishing work. This is usually sufficient to measure any room size at one time. It is wide enough to take measurements alone and long enough.
3. Stationery knife. This tool will be needed for cutting thin materials such as substrate, unpacking materials, wallpaper and much more.
4. Hammer. Even if you don’t need to hammer in nails, you won’t get anywhere from dowels for self-tapping screws into the walls.
5. Building bubble level. Of course, it’s better to have a laser level, but almost everyone has a bubble level, it’s cheap and it’s enough for the eyes to carry out finishing work.
6. A metal meter, a 50 cm metal ruler and a 30 cm metal ruler. These tools are very handy when drawing building materials - and it is better to have them all, since it is often a short ruler that is required.
7 Square. With it, it is convenient to draw future cuts at an angle of 90 or 45 degrees.
8. Shoe knife. The fact is that a clerical knife due to a thin blade is not suitable for materials such as linoleum, plastic, etc. but a shoe knife can do it without problems.
electric tool
1. Electric drill.
This tool will be needed for drilling holes for fasteners and it is better if it is with impact drilling - for walls made of brick, concrete and other mineral building materials. Accordingly, for a drill, you will need various types of drills for metal or wood, as well as special types of feather or crowns.
2. Perforator.
A very useful repair tool. When drilling concrete or brick, it is an order of magnitude more convenient than an electric drill, and when dismantling walls, there is nothing to replace it with, except perhaps with a hammer and a chisel. For a puncher, drills are needed for the SDS shank and a crown for drilling recesses for socket boxes (mounting boxes) will not interfere.
3. Electric jigsaw. When laying board materials such as chipboard, MDF, laminate, you will use it to make cuts, and it is suitable for both a straight saw and a curved line. Using a jigsaw, you can also saw through bars and boards, for example, for a frame for wall decoration or drywall.
4. Small angle grinder (Bulgarian). Best suited for a circle with a diameter of 125 mm. With its help, you can cut a pipe or a metal pin and saw off a tile or brick, and you need a thing to remove old paint, the main thing is to buy the right nozzle.
5. Screwdriver. This is a very useful tool for the home, as it can be used to turn self-tapping screws and drill holes. It is best to choose with a battery - then you can work with it, including when the mains is de-energized.
For electricians
1. Electric indicator (small screwdriver with LED) check the phase in the mains.
2. Pliers. Twist, strip the wire, cut the wire.
3. Side cutters. Cutting wire with them is much more convenient than with pliers.
4. Various types of screwdrivers. It is best to buy them individually and not in a set. You will need at least 6 screwdrivers. 3 flat and 3 cruciform, ranging from large to small. Choose soft, rubberized handles, this is very important for a large amount of work so that your hands do not rub to mazols.
Other instrument
1. Spatulas of various sizes. In general, you don't need to buy a lot of them. Three main ones are enough: 120 or 150 mm, 50 mm and 250 mm. This is quite enough if you are doing small jobs. But if you are finishing a rough apartment, then you can’t do without wider spatulas, and you also need a rule.
2. Mixer. This refers to a nozzle on a drill - to mix dry mixtures with water and induce plaster compositions, mortars and putties.
3. Plastic spatula. It will be needed when pasting walls with wallpaper.
4. Hacksaw miter box. This is, as they say, an amateur - you need it for sawing wooden bars at an angle of 45 degrees and you may need it in an apartment if you install the doors yourself.
5. Set for soldering plastic pipes. It is needed in order to mount the plumbing and heating system in the apartment.
6. Adjustable wrench. Well, without this tool, as they say, no plumbing work is possible. A very good thing for unscrewing old threaded connections on radiators and pipes.
Well, perhaps that's all. We have described the minimum set of tools when carrying out repairs in an apartment and, of course, it can be supplemented by others, but you definitely cannot do without these.