Why the right tools matter

Jobs on a wall fail at the fixing, not at the drilling, and the right anchor depends entirely on what the wall is made of. Plasterboard, hardwood framing, brick, hebel and fibro each hold weight in a different way.

What is behind your walls

There is no general purpose way to put something on a wall in this part of the country, because the walls are not general purpose.

An older Byron or Ballina house is likely hardwood framing behind plaster, and hardwood that has been drying since the 1950s is genuinely hard. A modern build is pine studs at 450 or 600 centres with 10mm plasterboard between them.

A newer coastal place might be hebel or rendered block, which looks like masonry, drills like a biscuit, and needs a completely different anchor. Bathrooms add tile over villaboard. Garages add besser block.

Each of those takes a different bit, a different anchor and a different amount of patience.

A plasterboard anchor in hebel will not hold a mirror. A masonry bit on hardwood will burn the bit. You only learn it by doing it a few thousand times on somebody else's wall.

What we bring

A stud finder that reads depth rather than just beeping, so we know whether we are on the edge of a stud or in the middle of it.

A cable and pipe detector. That is the one that matters. The drill that finds a water line makes the whole day about something else.

A laser level for anything that runs horizontally. A gallery wall measured by eye reads as wrong even when nobody can say why. And a vacuum.

Then the fixings. We carry the full range, because deciding what a wall needs after you have opened it is much better than deciding in the aisle at the hardware shop.

What high end work teaches you

The carpentry background is not really about the fancy work. Homesmith spent two decades on high end residential jobs, where the finishing work had to be right first time.

What you take from those houses is mostly habits. Cover the floor before the toolbox comes in, not after something gets dropped. Check the wall before the drill, every time, including the time you are certain. Fill and touch in the hole you got wrong rather than hoping the frame covers it.

What is worth doing yourself

Plenty of jobs in a house are genuinely fine to do yourself, and we will say so. A picture hook in plasterboard is a picture hook in plasterboard.

The ones worth handing over are the heavy things, the things going into a wall you cannot identify, and anything that will be looked at every day for the next decade. A shelf that goes up out of level stays out of level.