How Many Things Do I Actually Need - Basement

One of my readers shared his story with me that I believe most of my article readers would appreciate. It was about the problems they had while framing a few rooms in their basement. After you're done reading the article, you should have a better idea about creating lists and purchasing tools.

It was a brand-new home and John was going to refinish the basement on his own. He never worked in construction and no one that he ever knew growing up in Boston, had never built anything. John was the product of an extremely wealthy family, who had at least one person who could fix anything, just one phone call away.

John knew he could do it, so he went online and ordered about $3000 worth of tools. Tools that he believed, he would need to refinish his basement on his own. Air compressors, nail guns, saws, screw guns, table saw, nail bags, hammers, tape measures and the list goes on and on.

He put all the tools in his basement, ordered some building materials and went to work. He started to mark out the positions of the walls and realize that he didn't have a pencil or any type of marker. All he had in his house were expensive pens and he wasn't about to use one of them.

This was his first trip down to the lumber yard, but it wasn't going to be his last. He never even thought about creating a list for other items that he might need. Luckily for him the lumber yard was only about 15 minutes from his home, without any traffic that is.

He purchased his pencils and came back to start on the project, only to realize that he had purchased a chalk box but didn't realize that it didn't have any chalk in it. This was now the second trip to the lumber yard in less than two hours, without a list.

John told me that it took him all most 10 eight hour days to frame 15 walls in his basement. Not knowing anything about construction or what tools he would need, he made plenty of trips down to the local lumber yard.

John had a lot of fun finishing his basement, but couldn't believe how many things it actually took to finish it. His original tool purchase had doubled, the only problem was that his first load of tools came in one shipment and all the rest came one piece at a time.