Charlie DIYte’s tools are all stolen!

Well, it’s been a mad couple of days.  A week ago, I was blogging about how to put together the perfect Household DIY tool set – something that my wife had requested for those odd jobs that she wanted to do when I wasn’t around. The funny thing is that I have been using her new tool set quite a lot since I posted the video – it was just so convenient for little jobs around the house when my own tool kit wasn’t accessible (tape measure for checking dimensions of things we were going to buy, spanner and multi-tool to change my son’s bike tyre.. I could go on).

And then disaster struck. On Thursday night I put my own tools – most of which I keep in a wheelie bag for ease of transportation – in the garage for the night. This isn’t something I ever do, mindful of the fact that our garage is a little vulnerable to break-ins, being at the top of the garden.

Just some of the tools that were stolen from my garage on Friday night!

And then I woke up in the morning to find the garage padlock had been wrenched off the door, and my wheelie case along with its entire contents had gone, along with a Youngman ladder I bought from Wickes and, annoyingly, the green Makita accessory case (screwdriver and drill bits – top right in the photo above). I stood aghast looking at the space that my tool case had occupied.

Funnily enough it wasn’t the power tools that I had lost that got to me, as these can so easily be replaced. It was the silly little tools that I have owned for years which have become an extension of my arm – such as my trowel and square small tool, the military Leatherman penknife that a supplier had once given me by way of apology for letting me down on a job, and a whole raft of other little bits and bobs that occupied the bottom of my tool case, half of which I couldn’t name right now, but which I have been slowly compiling over the years, and each of which form an integral part of my tool collection.

So Friday morning saw the painful task of preparing a spreadsheet of everything I could think of that I had lost, for the insurers and police. My old faithful Ryobi electric screwdriver doesn’t exist now – I was given it about 6 years ago by my father-in-law. I liked its control, and the way the clutch could be set to gently send screws home without the destructive effect that you get with so many impact drivers today. So I’ll have to replace that with one of the aforementioned impact drivers. I’m going to stick with Ryobi, because I love these reasonably priced, no-nonsense tools, and also because I still have a few batteries – I took these out of my suitcase to charge them the night of the theft. It gave me a small shred of satisfaction to think that the thieves would have made off slightly frustrated that each of the power tools they took was missing its battery HA! there’s a bit of karma for you!!

Friday afternoon saw a hasty trip to B&Q to buy a new high security door hasp and security camera for the garage, which I managed to fit by borrowing off my son my old electric drill driver I had given him recently. And here’s an interesting (well, to me anyway) point. Until my mid 20s I had managed in all my DIY projects without an electric screwdriver. It was at the insistence of my old builder friend Roger that I bought a (Bosch) drill driver, and I have never looked back since. I would have seriously struggled to install the new hasp for the garage door padlock without it – because you just cannot get the power and momentum out of a conventional hand operated screwdriver (even a ratchet screwdriver) that you get from an electric screwdriver.

So today I pressed on with putting the skirting boards into our new bathroom, armed with my son’s drill driver, and a random selection of drill bits and countersink bits that I found in an old tool box. I can’t finish off the skirting boards though because the decorators caulk was just one of the things that was half inched by the burglars.

So what about the insurance claim? I submitted it this morning and to my surprise our insurers (Sainsburys) paid up this afternoon. But my elation and the aforementioned karma that I had cheated the burglars out of a few drill batteries quickly evaporated this evening when I went to mow the lawn only to find that they’d taken the lawn mower as well!!!!!