17 Home Depot Products To Consider For Your Next Renovation, According To Reviews

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It's not the little things that make a difference, but the unexpected things. There's at least some chance you have the little things around. When you're renovating a kitchen or building out your basement, every unexpected thing is yet another trip to the nearest Home Depot. These secret treasures might not always be indispensable, but they will almost certainly make your reno experience less painful. It could be anything from multi-color permanent markers to a pricey cordless oscillating saw. It may be something as simple as nitrile gloves or as feature-rich as an endlessly adjustable folding sawhorse. We've picked them because we know them, and we know they'll make things better.

Our criteria for picking these tools and accessories were simple and inflexible. The product had to be highly rated — generally 4.6 stars or higher — because retailers' rating inflation has made anything less all but unacceptable. (Have you noticed that you can now filter Amazon results that have 4.4 stars and up, rather than just 4 stars? They know what's up.) The product had to be in stock at one of the five Home Depot locations nearest to us. And it had to be something we understood and largely agreed with the purpose of. If you loved that all-metal hammer with a bunch of screwdrivers nested in the handle like Russian dolls, you'll need to get validation from someone else. Finally, the price had to be somewhat short of utterly mad, so Milwaukee's most expensive tool is out.

You see the DeWalt Atomic 20V MAX Brushless Oscillating Saw and think, "I have a toolbox; I don't need a multi-tool." But you do need an oscillating saw and its wild array of capabilities. For example, if you've installed laminate or engineered hardwood flooring without one of these, how's that expensive, single-purpose jamb saw you had to buy working out for you? But an oscillating saw does that and hundreds of other things nothing else in your toolbox will. We tested DeWalt's XR version of this saw and loved it.

Today's the day you learn to be more efficient, happier, and probably a bit of a jerk all at once. It's a well-known fact of life that even though driver bits somehow multiply like mosquitoes in a rain barrel, you can rarely find the one you're looking for. And if you do, it will almost certainly break when you stick it in your impact driver. What's called for here is a complete, well-organized set of driver bits that are impact-rated, like Milwaukee's 74-piece Shockwave Impact Duty Bit Set.

Here's where our strategy of only including in-stock products bites us, and Home Depot, in the rear. We'd much prefer to recommend Knipex pliers, but Home Depot doesn't stock them in stores. Of course, there's nothing wrong with Channellock's 12-inch Tongue and Groove Slip Joint Pliers. The thing about this style of pliers, often called plumber's pliers or water pump pliers, is that they're useful for many things beyond water pumps and whatever magic it is that plumbers do, which is why they're among the tools every homeowner should have

Whatever variety of work tables, benches, and stands you have, you will use folding sawhorses more than the rest put together during a renovation. And the portability factor won't just benefit you in the room you're revising; the ability to stow these away and save shop floor space is invaluable. The Husky Adjustable Sawhorse has a two-by-four notch that gives you the ability to throw together a long work surface in no time and with no sheet goods. One customer raved, "I never thought a pair of sawhorses could help so much."

Two things will bug you — and possibly hurt you — about an air hose, eventually. One is its refusal to stay flexible in the cold, and the other is the epic tripping hazard it becomes coiled all over your work area. Combined, these factors go from annoyance to constant danger. The DeWalt 50-foot Hose Reel solves both problems by including both a rubber hose that is, unlike poly hoses, impervious to the cold, and a hose reel that allows you to pull out only the hose length you need.

We have seen robotic lawn mowers that can be trained to follow you around with a trailer, and the natural first reaction is "I'll make the kids do it and save $6000." However it gets done, hauling materials from place to place can get old quickly. Have you ever tried to carry even one bundle of shingles very far? A good trailer for your riding mower, like Brinly-Hardy's Tow-Behind Lawn Mower Trailer Dump Cart, has 1,000 uses, from lawn and leaf cleanup to low-rent hayrides on Halloween.

A generation ago, DIYers did pretty much everything without gloves and felt stronger for it. Now, they're at dinner parties hiding their hands, which are covered with indelible grease stains from years of small engine repair, dirt tattoos from running wire through infinitely dusty walls and ceilings, and burn scars from half a hundred minor chemical spills. To say nothing of dealing with sewer issues. HDX Pop-N-Go Black Nitrile Gloves are a very small price to pay for putting something between your skin and whatever is clogging your septic line.

Hearing protection is no joke ... or, if it is a joke to you, you probably just can't hear the joke frequencies anymore. Maybe you've been on the job so long your hearing has slowly deteriorated, or maybe your teen years of listening to Def Leppard LPs on headphones cranked to 11 have caught up with you. (It can happen; believe that.) These 3M Pro-Grade Earmuffs provide better protection than most competing earmuffs and earplugs, and they're very comfortable, including a headband designed to be worn with a hat because, you know, construction.

Construction is mostly about sticking things to other things, so when something like clamping pliers can stand out, you know you're onto something. They're great for holding things together when you need both hands, or stronger hands, in every aspect of building and renovation: welding, woodworking, metalwork, and the like. They're especially useful for clamping down a straightedge when cutting sheet goods, and the Milwaukee Torque Lock version has a unique thumbscrew design that makes increased torque easier and even includes a screwdriver hole so you can really crank them down.

Two things can ruin your evening in the middle of a renovation. Okay, it's more like 370 things, but few are worse than preparing for the next morning's inspection and finding that you have no utility light, or finding your phone battery dead and not being able to warn your spouse that you'll be late. The Husky Rechargeable Utility Light with Power Bank solves both problems ... though you probably don't want to be operating a saw with a light like this. It should get you through some first-rate screwdriving, though.

They're just pens with an unfortunate name that calls to mind the most annoying tool of all time. But Milwaukee's Inkzall Fine-Point Markers are infinitely useful and, unlike a Sawzall, never fail so severely that you try to throw them in the trash from the top of a ladder. Use them for marking lumber for cuts and marking Romex sheathing. Home Depot has the temerity not to carry Klein pens, but the Milwaukee markers are also great. One customer noted, "Writes on just about anything, including concrete, wood, PVC, metal... even if the surface is dusty, wet, or oily, it will not disappoint."

Get ready for an understatement. It's not unusual for there to be not quite enough space or not quite the right angle for using a cordless drill. Indeed, it's probably more common than not for drilling angles to be inconvenient. It's cute how drills always claim to work in stud bays, not taking into account the fact that one of the end bays on each wall has a decent chance of being much shorter than normal. Enter the DeWalt Maxfit Right-Angle Attachment, which you chuck into your drill for working in very shallow spaces.

This basic Kreg Pocket Hole Jig is painfully simple, outrageously overpriced, and completely irreplaceable. During a home renovation, you'll find a dozen reasons to toenail a screw or 12 (or "toescrew," if you prefer), and you'll find a reason or two to use a Kreg jig to do a neater job ... cabinetry, for example. This version, the R3, can handle wood from ½ to 1 ½ inches in ⅛-inch increments and comes with helpful spacers and a removable clamping surface. Buy a knockoff if you want, but the Kreg R3 is virtually bombproof.

The DeWalt Utility Knife and Tanto Pocketknife Combo includes a pretty good utility knife and one of the best super-cheap pocketknives ever made. The flip-to-open utility knife operates easily, closes securely, and stores five extra blades in its handle. The pocketknife easily flips open on a ball bearing pivot that's super smooth and about as easy to open as any more expensive open-assist pocketknife. The tanto blade shape is surprisingly useful, and the partially serrated blade means the knife will be sharp even when it's dull.

Spring clamps are invaluable during a home renovation, when they can clamp small glued parts, affix things to ladders and walls, hang a tarp over an unfinished wall, attach shade cloth and row covers, and (judging by the customer photos) hang a picture of a young Patrick Swayze. The Anvil Two-Inch Spring Clamps come with holes so that they can be hung on nails or screwed to walls or framing. With a rating of 4.8 stars across over 2,000 reviews, customers seemingly cannot be without this small tool.

Impact drivers have all but replaced the need for pneumatic impact wrenches for homeowners and DIYers. But for that to work, you need to be able to stick sockets on your impact wrench. The somewhat confusingly named Husky Impact Driver Socket Adapter Set has adapters for just that, adapting the impact driver-standard ¼-inch hex shank to the most common ¼-, ⅜-, and ½-inch square drive sizes. Even better, the set has two full sets, one 2.5 inches long and one 6 inches long, which you don't see often.

At the beginning of this article, we disparaged a hammer with a bunch of screwdrivers nested within its handle. The Klein Tools 11-in-1 screwdriver does a modern version of whatever that hammer is attempting, and does it very well. X-in-1 screwdrivers are nothing new for electricians and homeowners who can fit all their tools in a junk drawer, but the Klein 11-in-1 incorporates seven driver bits, cleverly disguising the fact that it also houses ¼-, 5/16-, ⅜-, and ½-inch nut drivers ... all in one assembled piece.