best home maintenance tools

Hey guys! We’re thrilled to check in today to share one of our very fave new little discoveries with you and some of the best home maintenance tools.

Enter your new favorite thing: General Tools. This fab company makes a lot of awesome products, from contour gauges to angle template tools, and laser tape measures…  they make all of our home improvement jobs, easier. {We have to say, we’re kind of nerding out over here.} Today, we wanted to share a few of our faves from their company. Some overlooked best home maintenance tools!

With all the rehabs, flooding, and remodeling that we take on with our company and our own house, we’ve now seen quite a few home catastrophes. Unfortunately, it happens. It’s life.

Must have tools

If you own any kind of property, these tools are must-haves.

A lot of things can go wrong in a home, and we’ve experienced our own fair share over seventeen years of marriage. {Feel free to spill the beans of your own, it’ll make us feel not so alone. Ha!}

Today, we wanted to introduce you to two tools you didn’t know you needed.

First up: The Combo Moisture Meter. 

These are basically awesome for detecting water damage and mold. Ew.

Recently, we had a little issue in our upstairs bathroom. So we had to cut into the wall and repair our valve from the other side. We just repaired that hole after making sure it was all dry. However, did you know it’s possible to test for water damage before you cut? All with this awesome meter. 

What we love about this particular model, is that it lets you choose between pins {unfinished materials} or pinless. Something like drywall, a material you don’t want to shove a pin into.

You can large areas quickly to find wet spots with this guy. It can also detect the presence of mold. Hello old homes!

I was thrilled the moisture meter comes with a feature that lets you select the type of material being scanned, for a more accurate read.

Life lesson

Anyone, remember our beercanmoldpocalypse bathroom? Once upon a time in our last house, we had serious mold growth after discovering a slow and steady leak. Hindsight is 50/50, but if we’d had this little tool, it could have been prevented. 

What we learned is the worst of the damage, the mold, was due to the leak being so slow that it wasn’t noticeable to the naked eye until it was too late, thus going undiscovered and allowing mold to grow. However, with a quick monthly scan of our General tools moisture meter leaks are detected before they become a major issue. 

A lot of flooding happens in our area, we just recently had two friends discover a water leak, and subsequent damage in their home because of it. This actually helps us check specific areas so that we know the best course of action, and how far the water has gone before the insurance adjuster even has to show up.

Next up: The Infrared Thermometer. 

This summer, we had a little drama with our air conditioning unit. Yay. 

If you’ve been following along on our money pit journey, then you know we replaced the entire unit when we redid the house. Our bills had been creeping up and the air was running a lot, but we just assumed it was having a hard time keeping up with all the hot weather we’ve been having. Again, it was a unit that was less than 3 years old and is on a maintenance plan. Why would there be a problem with it?

Nope. A few bills later, and we found out that it was low on freon, and had to replace a loose part. Guess what we didn’t think about using… this awesome tool when it seemed too hot in the house. We aren’t going to talk about the money we wasted by not having a General Tools Infrared Thermometer …that’s a discussion for our therapist.

But guess who now has a spreadsheet and will be logging airflow temperatures coming out of the vents every month?

It’s also a great way to keep your house in check to make sure your large and expensive pieces, like your fridge, oven and air conditioning units are working efficiently. Monitoring them gives you the ability to fix them before things get bad. Again, with the hindsight thing. 

Between us, I think Jamin was having a little fun when we tried all these out, acting like a home inspector or something. 

so much more

We love that we’re able to share General Tools with you, and we hope you’ll visit their site and click around – they have some really fun tools to check out for your next project or for that homeowner in your life that’s hard to shop for. 

Anything to make home life and all things DIY a little easier! 

What’s your favorite tool you spy? We’re already checking out something else we’d love to add to the collection. 

What’s on your list?

Have an inspired day!

{We partnered with and are sponsored by our good friends at General Tools for this post. For more info on our branded content please visit our disclosure page.}