Summary
Closing on a house brings a strange urge to fill the garage. Every Home Depot trip after moving in walks you past six-tool combo kits stacked on pallets, and each box looks like the responsible buy. Most of those tools would sit in their bags for years.
The first year of homeownership asks for a narrower set of skills than the kit boxes suggest: mounting things to walls, cutting a few boards, patching drywall, and fighting the weather. After building my whole workshop around Ryobi ONE+, I’d tell any new homeowner to start with four tools on that platform and hold off on the rest until a project demands it. All four share one battery, and every one of them has earned its hook in my garage.
Ryobi ONE+ drill and impact driver combo kit
The batteries in this box matter more than the tools
The PCL1200K2 kit lists at 99 often enough that paying full price feels like a mistake. Inside, you get a 1/2-inch drill/driver, an impact driver, a charger, and two compact batteries. Those last two items are the real purchase. Every ONE+ tool you add later can come home bare, and that’s where Ryobi pricing gets genuinely cheap.
The two tools split the work cleanly. The drill bores pilot holes, runs hole saws, and sets drywall anchors without chewing them up. The impact driver takes anything that has to bite deep into framing. My folding squat rack from PRx Performance is the heaviest thing I’ve hung in this house, and the impact driver sank every lag screw on its wall brackets without bogging down. A drill would have stalled partway, or wrenched my wrist trying.
TV mounts, closet shelving, and garage storage hooks all follow that same pattern. The compact packs look undersized, but they’re light enough to hold overhead and outlast a typical mounting job.
Ryobi ONE+ oscillating multi-tool
It makes clean cuts in places no saw can reach
An oscillating multi-tool doesn’t spin its blade. It swings the blade back and forth through a tiny arc thousands of times per minute, so it can plunge straight into a flat surface and stop exactly on a line. That’s why mine came out when I hung drywall. Every outlet and switch box needs an opening, and a jab saw leaves ragged edges that cover plates only partly hide. The multi-tool let me cut along my marked lines and pop out openings that fit the boxes without extra trimming.
The same trick shows up all over a house. It undercuts door casing so new flooring can slide beneath, trims shims flush with the wall, and scrapes old caulk out from around a tub. With the sanding pad attached, it gets into corners a palm sander can’t touch.
Ryobi’s brushed PCL430B runs about 50. Pick up a multi-pack of blades while you’re there. They dull faster than most people expect.
Ryobi ONE+ circular saw
A table saw can wait, possibly forever
New DIYers tend to assume real woodworking starts with a table saw. I still don’t own one. My ONE+ circular saw handles every rip and crosscut I need, and it hangs on a wall instead of taking over a corner of the garage floor.
Its biggest job so far was a desk I built from scratch. The saw cut the top and supporting pieces to size, and a hole saw on the drill finished the cable grommet openings. Nothing in that project called for a stationary tool. A pair of sawhorses, a clamped straightedge, and a decent blade covered all of it.
Beginners get the best results by guiding the saw instead of freehanding it. Holding a speed square against the board keeps crosscuts square, and a straight board clamped alongside the line acts as a fence for longer rips. That setup handles garage shelving, a replacement fence picket, or lumber for a raised garden bed.
Expect to pay around $119 for the bare tool with a 6-1/2-inch blade. If plywood is on your list, swap the stock blade for one with more teeth.
Ryobi ONE+ 18v Circular Saw
- Color
- Yellow
- Tool Type
- Circular Saw
Ryobi ONE+ heat gun
Winter makes the strongest case for this one
Northern Indiana winters have a habit of freezing locks solid, usually on mornings when I’m already running late. Hot water seems like the quick fix, but whatever runs inside the mechanism can refreeze and leave the lock worse off. A heat gun thaws it without adding any moisture. I keep the nozzle moving a few inches from the lock body, and the ice lets go before long. Take it slow around painted metal or plastic housings, since the air leaving the nozzle is hot enough to blister a finish.
The rest of the year, it covers any job that needs controlled heat. You can shrink plastic insulation film tight across a drafty window, soften old adhesive so labels peel off in one piece, or loosen stubborn caulk before scraping it. If your home was built before 1978, have any flaking paint tested for lead before pointing a heat gun at it.
Ryobi’s version usually runs 90 bare, under half of what Milwaukee asks for its heat gun.
Ryobi ONE+ Heat Gun - Color
- Yellow
- Tool Type
- Heat Gun Let your next project choose the fifth tool Four tools and two compact batteries handle most of what a new house throws at you in year one. Once those batteries live in your garage, every future Ryobi purchase can be a bare tool, so the fifth costs far less than the first did. Wait until a real job asks for it. A tree limb over the fence might justify a reciprocating saw, and a leaf-covered driveway could make the case for a cordless blower. Until then, a little care keeps the four you already own running reliably for years.