Just bought a new home? Congratulations. Signing the papers, getting the title deed, and moving into your home are just the first stages of making the house yours, though. It still needs your personal touch — redesigns constitute part of the package when it comes to turning a house into a home. In fact, over 54% of homeowners completed a remodeling project in 2024, so even if you move in without renovating, there’s a significant chance you’ll need to down the road. 

When the time comes, there’ll be two choices on the table: Hire a professional or get your hands dirty. Even if you opt for the former, it’s prudent to have a handful of tools at your disposal in your garage in case you need them. Not every repair or household need requires reaching out to licensed professionals, so it’s advisable to keep a collection of essentials at the ready for quick fixes while problems are still within your control. 

As a new homeowner, you might be at a loss as to what those tools are. Not to worry, we’ve got you covered with 16 of them.

The importance of having a fire extinguisher in your home can’t be overstated. We wouldn’t recommend inhabiting a building that doesn’t have one. Even in day-to-day household operations, you’re exposed to fire hazards every single day: your cooker, whether electric or gas, your electrical connections. A distraction here, a careless use case there, and a spark could ignite into a raging flame in your household.

To mitigate this, you’re going to need fire extinguishers. Yes, we’re not just talking about one unit in your garage. Ideally, there should be a fire extinguisher per floor in a building — imagine having to race up or down one floor to get your hands on one. The ideal number depends on the size of your home and the number of rooms in it, but you should have access to a multipurpose ABC extinguisher at a minimum.

There may be multiple classes of fires you could contend with at home, but a multipurpose fire extinguisher should serve you well. Stash a couple for easy access and make sure they’re not expired — those can fail when you need them due to lost pressure or degraded components.

In the course of your renovations or repairs, you’ll definitely come across some tasks that require you to exert a bit more grip and force than your fingers can provide. That’s where pliers come in; they increase the amount of force that you can apply to an object through their handles. 

You see, pliers are essentially made of two parts — a metal “gripper,” if you will, that maintains contact with whatever object you’re trying to manipulate, and two handles for you to grip. Now, if you’re new to this type of work and don’t know where or when to use pliers, we have you covered. They’re applicable in almost every task you can think of, whether it’s cutting, bending, attaching — you name it.

Got a stubborn nail that’s refusing to come out? Whip out a pair of pliers. An old car with a dead battery that you need to jump start? Pliers can work there too, both to bypass the ignition switch and tighten any loose terminals.

These need no introduction, even if you haven’t done a day of workshop labor in your life. Got loose-fitting furniture or nails poking out in odd places? Having a hammer around gives you an easy fix in these situations; whip one out and pound them back in to give your furniture a solid, uniform finish.

You’d be surprised by just how many projects call for using a hammer. As a new homeowner, you probably have a collection of picture frames or posters you’d like to use to decorate your house. You could put them up on the walls in one of two ways: Applying adhesive from a glue gun if you don’t want protrusions, or, as is far more common, nails. 

All you need to do is take a nail, hold it between your fingers at the base where the sharp point meets the wall, and drive the hammer repeatedly until you’re satisfied. Wear work gloves — the last thing you want is to miss a swing with your hammer and feel it land on your bare hand.

Just like hammers, a drill can be priceless for a new homeowner. Want to set up your wall-mounted TV stand? You’re going to need to drill quite a few holes in your wall, and calling in a local installer can be pricey — some customers report spending more than $150 on installations. 

While you may not attain the same level of finish that a professional would, those extra dollars staying in your pocket can go a long way, especially when your savings have just taken a hit with the down payment on your home. So, a cordless drill could come in handy for you. We say cordless because corded drills can be a bit difficult to manipulate. 

There’s a slight trade-off in terms of power — if you really need a powerful drill above all else, a corded drill should be your pick. Need more info? We’ve outlined arguments to help you make a decision between corded and cordless power tools. 

Depending on your level of familiarity with tools, the name “wrench” might not mean anything to you. There are many different types and specializations of wrenches: The ones you use on pipes and the ones you may know as “spanners” are just the tip of the iceberg. 

When you move into a new home, there may be imperfections in the plumbing that don’t align with the life you’re used to. The water pressure might be too strong (or too weak), there might be a few blockages, or some pipes could need replacement. That’s where pipe wrenches come in, with their adjustable locking jaw that fits directly onto the piece you’re working with. 

Similarly, spanners are useful everywhere around the home for tightening or loosening nuts and bolts. Whether you’re the DIY build type or you own a car, you can find a use for wrenches in your garage and throughout your home, so you should own an assortment of them.

You never know how badly you need an accurate measuring tool until you’re whipping out your iPhone and fumbling around with the Measure app. While Apple’s measurements can be a lifesaver if you’re looking for a rough estimate to work with, if you need more exact figures, a tape measure is going to be your best bet. Wonder how accurate the iPhone’s measuring app is? Check this out. 

Now, you might think you’d never really have a strong enough need to justify getting one. However, projects can pop up around the house at any time — a small cupboard here, a dining table there. Imprecise measurements can grind your gears too, so it’s important to get exact dimensions for your projects.

Think of it as a one-and-done purchase, and you can find multiple use cases for it. Whether it’s scoping out the exact dimensions of a piece of furniture or taking bodily measurements for clothing, the tape measure’s versatility means that it won’t gather dust on your tool shelf.

If you’re moving into a new home, there’s a good chance you’re going to be assembling furniture. Whether that’s your bed, a cabinet, or even installing electrical outlets, lots of projects require fastening for a secure fit that won’t break apart under a bit of stress. Nails might be the more popular member of the fastener family, but screws are equally important. 

To fasten a screw, you could use a drill with a screwdriver bit, or if you’re feeling a little old school, a screwdriver set can come in handy. Even if you’re not handling the furniture installation yourself, there’s every chance some screws might pop free from a piece of furniture after being stressed a few times. 

Or, there could be some reason that calls for you to dismantle and reassemble items. Thus, a screwdriver is an essential tool to have around — the simple willingness to operate one yourself can save you quite a few dollars down the road.

You might think that knives only belong in the kitchen along with the rest of your cutlery. After all, that’s where you’re most likely to use them. However, when you’re moving into a new place, chances are that you have tons of boxes to unpack. It’s not uncommon for these boxes to be wrapped with woven strapping — a piece of plastic that makes tugging them along much easier.

That’s where utility knives come in. Instead of potentially dulling your chef’s knife or your scissors by putting them to the task on a bevy of boxes, use a utility knife instead; you can use it to cut boxes open, cut ropes, trim tape, and handle a range of other tasks that require a sharp edge. 

A pair of scissors might be your natural pick for stuff like this, but if they’re not razor-sharp, you’re going to need to apply a lot more force through your fingers. That could easily lead to hand injuries down the line. If you have a lot of deliveries coming into your garage, invest in utility knives — they’ll save you time and reduce your risk of injuries if handled properly. We’ve also ranked every major utility knife brand to help you make a decision. 

Garages aren’t just a place to park your cars or store items away from the main house. According to a Craftsman survey, more than 53% of Americans use their garages to carry out DIY projects. So, if you like to work with your hands, you’re likely to do the same in your new home. 

To this point, it stands to reason that you should equip your garage with the necessary tools to make working on your projects as easy and stress-free as possible. Drills and hammers might be the more obvious additions to your toolbox, but clamps are just as essential to the quality of your finishes. They hold objects in place while you manipulate them with other tools. 

Now, that may not seem like much of a contribution, but if you’ve ever worked on any projects where you need a workpiece to hold still — like carving wood, for instance — you’d appreciate just how important clamps are. No workshop is complete without an essential set of clamps, so it should be one of the first items on your shopping list when you’re setting it up. We’ve listed the best clamps for woodworking to help you with that.

In an ideal world, we’d all love to paint the rooms and the outside of our houses once and be done with it forever. However, that’s not the case. Many factors can contribute to your perfect wall paint chipping away or changing color: natural elements, a badly installed wall panel, or, if you have little ones running around the house, handprints. 

When your walls get discolored, you could call a professional to give them a makeover. If you’re trying to save a few bucks, though, you could order some paint and do the job yourself with some paintbrushes, rollers, and a couple of educational YouTube videos.

Paint itself is another thing entirely — depending on how well it’s sealed or the type of paint, it could go bad. Opened paint cans typically last about one to two years, and if your house is sparkling new or freshly renovated, you might not need a bucket of paint within that time frame. Paintbrushes and rollers, however, should always be on hand for whenever you need them, so store them in your garage for a rainy day.

As mentioned earlier, lots of Americans use their garages as a de facto workshop. If you’re going to be working with wood of any kind in your workshop, a basic kit of tools isn’t complete without a collection of sandpaper. That’s because manipulating wood will unavoidably give rise to rough or jagged edges; you’ll need to smooth these for anyone to safely handle your wooden products without worrying about splinters.

That’s not the only thing you can use sandpaper for around your garage, though. In our previous point, we mentioned the importance of having paintbrushes and rollers around the house. Well, sandpaper can help in the painting process as well — it can remove old paint and varnish from a surface so you can apply a fresh layer of paint to it.

If you need to polish glass or metal, too, sandpaper’s a handy tool to have in your kit. Don’t just get one grit surface, though; different surfaces and degrees of finish require varying grit levels, so stock up on an assortment of them if you’re regularly working on projects.

As a homeowner, you’re going to be dealing with electrical issues far more than you realize. A burnt socket here, a faulty switch there, and you suddenly need specialized tools to keep tabs on how current and voltage are flowing through your power outlets. Voltage testers come in handy here; they’re basically the first port of call when you’re troubleshooting an electrical issue.

Say one of your gadgets doesn’t charge when you plug it into a power source. The first thing you do is ensure it’s properly plugged in. If it is, and the problem persists, you need to investigate the power source itself. At this juncture, you definitely don’t want to use your hands to probe any wires, so a voltage tester does the job for you.

A contact voltage tester, for instance, typically has a probe that you use to make direct contact with the wire or socket in question. The point of this is to find out if there’s any voltage flowing through the circuit at all, and whether the voltage is sufficient to carry the load your gadget is placing on it safely.

In a scenario where you’re woodworking and building something from scratch, chances are you’ll need to slice multiple planks of wood into manageable chunks. 

Woodworkers aren’t the only target audience for handsaws; they can also prove quite useful in homes with drywall when it comes to installing electrical components. Given that handsaws have a sharp point, all you have to do is stab the edge into the drywall and cut out the shapes of your wall outlets. 

This way, there’s minimal dust, although you’ll have quite a bit of residue to clean up when you’re done. You could achieve similar results with a power tool, but if you know what you’re doing, you can get better cuts for cheap and a cleaner energy profile to match by using handsaws.

We talked about fire extinguishers earlier in this article, but that’s just one piece of the safety puzzle in your new home. If you’re going to be working with woodworking or electrical tools, you’re going to need to take certain precautions. 

Protective gloves can come in handy in a myriad of situations around your garage, and by extension, your home. Say you’re cleaning your floors with bleach as part of your regular maintenance schedule. You don’t want your bare skin coming into contact with bleach; it could irritate or burn your skin. That’s just one application, though. Whether you’re gardening, handling pet waste, painting, or even handling raw meat in the kitchen, protective gloves offer a layer of protection against cuts, chemical irritation, and other health hazards.

It’s important to have protective gloves in ample supply around your home. Depending on the number of floors in your home, you should consider building several stashes — your garage, kitchen, and bathrooms being the prime areas to target.

When you’re moving into a new home, everything might be perfect for a while. The finishing on your furniture is magnificent, the plumbing works as it should, and your list of improvements to make is impressively short. 

Over time, though, you’re bound to run into some problems, and you’re going to need to get active with your maintenance. Your drains could experience clogs, but not all clogs require you to call a plumber. Having a plunger around the house for situations like this could save you a ton of money, not to mention the hours you’d spend cleaning up your floors in an overflow emergency. 

If you have wooden flooring or cabinets around, the last thing you want is an overflow — those can seep into the material and weaken its integrity. Ideally, you should have both a sink plunger and a toilet plunger. In a pinch, a sink plunger could unclog your plumbing, but it won’t do the suction job as well as the one made specifically for the toilet.

Ever needed to stack multiple stools or chairs to change out a dim lightbulb? You could probably manage the feat with someone holding your contraption, but you can’t shake the unsteady feeling that a simple misstep would bring the whole support system (and you) crashing down. 

Similarly, if you’re exposed to rough weather like tornadoes and hurricanes, chances are you may need to run periodic checks on your roof for debris and damage. No number of chairs and stools within reason would help you safely accomplish this climb.

Climbing doesn’t have to be more dangerous than it already is, and that’s why you want a ladder in your garage inventory from the moment you move into your new home. You’ll still need to observe safety protocols, like placing it only on areas with stable footing, but it makes your job much easier and significantly less risky.