When we first moved into our house, we didn't have very much, especially in the way of tools. As anybody moving into their first house knows, the list of schtuff you have to buy is longer than a General Conference talk. You've moved into this new place with more space than you've ever had and you need to buy furniture, appliances, tools, etc. Naturally, you get pretty sick of going to Lowe's and Target, getting your credit card out and wondering if it will ever stop. Of course, you start to borrow things from your neighbors so you don't have to keep spending.
This worked out nicely for a while, but then once my neighbor (Burly Steve) started teasing me about borrowing his lawn mower. For those of you who borrow frequently, there's nothing worse than thinking that it's completely okay with the lender, and then you find out it's been bugging them this whole time. That's just something you don't even joke about. So I went out and bought a lawn mower the next week.
Not only that, but it affected my attitude towards borrowing anything from Burly. Originally, I was planning on borrowing his miter saw and framing nailer, both very expensive tools, but instead I'm buying them both (I already bought the saw, I'll buy the nailer in the next couple of weeks).
But you can't, and shouldn't, buy EVERYTHING you'll ever need, especially those tools that you only need once or twice. One of those tools was a Ramset, a powder charged nailgun, which is used mostly to nail 2x4s to concrete. I needed it to lay out the walls of my basement, so I borrowed Burly's old Ramset. Unfortunately, after the first nail, the thing busted. Now I have to buy Burly a new Ramset! I know it's not just me because the new one I bought (which I'm using to finish the job before I give it to Burly) is working splendidly and I'm not doing anything different.
This isn't the first time this has happened. I also borrowed my other neighbor's sledgehammer, which had been sitting unused in his shed for about 200 years, and the head snapped off after like the 3rd swing, so I had to buy him a new one. So now I have to shift my borrowing algorithm:
1. If you're going to use the tool often or for extended periods of time, you should buy.
2. If the tool you're borrowing from your neighbor is old, you should probably buy, because it might break and then you have to pay for a new tool AND you don't even get to keep it.
3. So you should only borrow little tools (which usually are cheap and easy to buy) that have little chance of breaking and you only use once every 4 years, like a sharpener for garden tools, that costs $8.96 at Lowe's.
I'm preparing myself mentally to buy a ridiculous amount of tools.
8 comments:
I'm on a first name basis with one of the home depot guys, I even met his girlfriend.
As for borrowing stuff, I borrowed my father in law's truck, only to have it break down. i know how you feel
From an efficiency perspective, it is too bad you couldn't reach an agreement with Steve. Really there is no reason for two neighbors to duplicate all the same tools. Perhaps you could have paid him a rental fee of $30/month, which could include his lawn moter, nail gun, etc. You would save money, and he would have no basis to give you a hard time since he would be earning some money too. Of course, it might not be worth it to him for only $30/month and you might not want to have that close a relationship with Burly anyway.
Personally, what few tools I do own are in storage, as renters have far fewer responsibilities than owners.
Yeah, borrowing can be an awkward thing. My neighbors seem to love when we borrow stuff, but like you, I don't want to be the annoying neighbors that always need their things. One time, we borrowed a friend's car (in NJ, when they needed someone to park it for them while they were traveling, so they wouldn't get tickets for street cleaning), and it got broken into under our watch. Totally jacked up the dashboard trying to steal the audio system, which I think they destroyed in the process. I felt terrible and thought we were liable; Mark disagreed since it could have happened to them anyway. Kind of like the sledgehammer thing...What do you think?
It's simple, really. You should become a father. Then you will get a new tool every single June.
Tell Burly that your borrowing simply raises the value of his property because you are improving your own and making the neighborhood more attractive. It is in his interest to let you borrow anything. You're doing him a favor.
Ah, Kent. You had it made. You had the ultimate neighbor: a friendly guy with every tool known to man, from wheelbarrows to sledgehammers. But you got greedy with the lawn mower. I mean, what the heck, did you think you were going to borrow that thing every week for the next ten years?
You can borrow a lawn mower two, three, maybe as much as four times while you're waiting for Sears to have a sale. But if it's August and you're still borrowing that thing, then of course you're going to get the snide remark. Burly had no choice, really. And now you're self-conscious about borrowing anything in the whole, glorious collection.
Welcome to the club ruled by The Fergusons and apparently The Watabes. They own every single gadget/tool known to man. And it's probably because of similar arguments. I'm planning on joining that club, right after we buy a power sander and a staple gun. Maybe a nail gun too. And a regular gun.
Anyway, the moral of the story is this: Apparently our years of snide remarks never affected the Goodwin's borrowing of our ladder.
I think you can rent most expensive power tools from home depot and lowes. That way you can avoid the whole debate.
However, on the buy side there's always craigslist to recoup some cash.
Post a Comment