Buying tools versus calling a handyman: where the line actually is

Assembling furniture: how often you actually open a flat-pack box

A cordless drill with the right bits turns flat-pack assembly from a two-hour wrestle into a forty-minute job. If you are furnishing a whole flat, or you rent and move every couple of years, a mid-range drill earns its keep quickly and you will use it for other things besides wardrobes.

But if you buy one wardrobe, one bed frame and a few shelving units over a decade, a drill bought for that sits in a drawer the rest of the time. The instructions that come with flat-pack furniture also assume patience and a second pair of hands for the larger pieces, which a tool alone does not solve.

Furniture assembly done for you starts from 39 € an hour, with the minimum set at one hour. For a standard wardrobe or kitchen cabinet run, that is often one call-out, not a repeated cost, which changes the comparison considerably.

Hanging shelves and mounting a TV: stud finder versus knocking on the wall

Knocking on a wall and listening for a change in sound works reasonably well on the timber stud walls found in many newer flats, but it tells you almost nothing about a concrete panel wall from a Soviet-era block, where the question is not where the stud is but how thick the cover layer is and where the rebar runs. A cheap stud finder is not much use there either.

For a single shelf or picture rail, a masonry bit, a decent hammer drill and some patience with test holes will get you there without any special detector. Where a stud finder earns its price is if you are mounting several TVs, curtain rails and shelving units across a whole flat, especially in a timber-framed wall where hitting the stud actually matters for load.

If it is one TV bracket and two shelves, the arithmetic rarely favours buying a detector you will use once. Odd jobs like this, from 39 € an hour, usually take less time in a tradesman's hands than the trial-and-error version with a borrowed drill.

Small bathroom and kitchen repairs: basin wrenches and other specialist tools

A basin wrench, a decent set of adjustable spanners, PTFE tape and a pipe wrench will get you through most small plumbing jobs — replacing a tap, tightening a leaking connection, fitting a new shower hose. The basin wrench in particular is a strange, single-purpose tool: it does one thing, reaching the nuts behind a basin in a gap no ordinary spanner fits, and it does that thing for years.

The trouble is that most homeowners meet this exact problem once, maybe twice, in a decade. Buying a basin wrench for one tap replacement is a lot like buying a socket set for one bolt: technically the right tool, badly matched to how often you will use it.

Plumbing work, from 45 € an hour, covers precisely this kind of job, and a plumber arrives already carrying the specialist tools that would otherwise sit unused in your cupboard. For anything touching the gas supply, that is not something to attempt with a general toolkit at all — it needs a specialist, and we do not do gas work ourselves.

How to work out whether the purchase actually pays off

The calculation is simple once you frame it correctly: divide the tool's price by the number of times you realistically expect to use it over, say, five years, then compare that per-use figure against the cost of getting the job done. A 60 € drill used ten times costs 6 € a use in tool alone, before your own time and the bits you still need to buy.

Add in the things that do not show up on the receipt: storage space, the risk of buying the wrong bit or blade for the specific wall or pipe, and the hour spent watching a video to learn a technique you will use once. None of that is wasted if you enjoy the work, but it is a real cost if you do not.

A rough rule that holds for most Tallinn flats: if you expect to do the job three or more times in the next few years, buying starts to make sense. For a one-off or a job you are unsure how to size — an odd-shaped shelf bracket, a tap you have not seen before — a call-out is often cheaper once your own time is counted honestly.

What is worth owning yourself, and what to leave to the person who brings it

Some tools are worth having regardless of how often you use them, because they are cheap, take no space, and cover many small jobs at once rather than one specific task. Others are specialist enough that buying one for a single use rarely makes sense next to simply paying for the hour.

Think of it as two piles: a small general kit that earns its keep across dozens of unrelated tasks, and a longer list of specialist items that only pay off if the job recurs. Most flats need less of the second pile than the shops would have you believe.

• Worth owning: a decent cordless drill, a set of screwdrivers, a spirit level, a tape measure, an adjustable spanner.
• Worth owning if you do a lot of DIY: a stud finder, a hammer drill with masonry bits, a basic socket set.
• Usually not worth buying for one job: a basin wrench, tile cutters, a pipe wrench, specialist sealant guns.
• Rule of thumb: if you would use it fewer than three times in five years, renting or hiring the job out usually costs less.
• Always leave to a specialist: anything touching gas pipework or a load-bearing wall, regardless of what tools you own.