I still wouldn't buy a drill today, but I'd consider renting one from Home Depot before asking neighbors (mostly because the idea of asking neighbors wouldn't cross my mind, to prove GP's point).
A drill/electric screwdriver is probably the most useful power tool today for a home owner. If you don't own one you likely wouldn't own any power tools. And at a car ride and $20 a day rental it doesn't take long to justify the on sale price. Are you space constrained or do you just not do simple maintenance yourself or is there some other reason my engineer brain isn't grokking.
Eg I wouldn't even work on a light switch without a power drill because I don't want to make the literal 200 revolution over 5 minutes per screw to check if it's out. Also it's harder to shock yourself.
And to be fair I own not just a drill but woodworking tools and metal working tools (lathe mill) and a 3d printer and cover a laser cutter and a welder that does aluminum. So maybe I'm biased.
"Eg I wouldn't even work on a light switch without a power drill because I don't want to make the literal 200 revolution over 5 minutes per screw"
200 revolutions, 5 minutes? What kind of screws are in your light switch?
I've never seen one that took a sizeable number revolutions.
A quick check suggests 6-32 threading is standard. That means 32 threads-per-inch, so your 200 revolutions means your light switch screws are six inches long??
Mild exaggeration. They're usually 2 inches from what I recall. If you're doing a lot of light switches or even a few it's still a lot of turns with your hand, or you know 2-3 seconds with a drill. But for 2 gang box, that's 4 2" screws + 4 decorative screws. So 5 minutes is not really an exaggeration to take all that out, about the same to put it all back in. And when you take into consideration how it's better to just shove a ton of wires into the box (as contractors do) instead of leaving the wires too short, the mechanical advantage of the drill doing the work allowing you to align the screw with minimal and accurate force instead of doing accurate alignment while cranking hard with a screwdriver... yes it's a big win.
And then you get to flat head decorative screws, I find it way easier to use a drill on those as it is easier to not scratch the paint off of the screws, which bothers me.
Good to know. Never thought of that. Tho my loft had super deeply recessed boxes that fell back without the screws so you needed super long ones to tension the box to the drywall.
Poster was mildly exaggerating. Poster also prefers to get all the honey do sh*t done in one go instead of stopping because hand is tired. Honey do things encounter enough issues and trips to home depot that I'm not keen on adding 2 more (to pick up the drill and drop it off).
Poster was me, and I wouldn't do that. Besides 1/2 the time impact drivers won't even fit in those gaps. You gotta slip the thing in there and curse the engineer who designed it along with every other person servicing the thing ever.
One statistic I've seen is that a drill has on average about 10 minutes of use. So for a lot of people who own one it makes no sense at all. I for one simply borrow the hammer drill at work when I need it; at home I have a cordless screwdriver which takes care of screws and most holes that don't go into concrete or bricks.
Cordless screwdriver isn't far off from a drill, I would consider both for a homeowner.
Hammer drill is getting into more interesting things, I own one but I would definitely lend it out to a friend (with maybe some supervision the first time). I got mine at a steal like 25 years ago. But most people need to go through wood, plastic, or drywall, not concrete.
Also my drill has seen several hours of runtime but I also redid my loft apartment, and am generally handy.
Hammer drill is what I meant with drill, as the cordless screwdriver suffices for most other things. In Europe you need it pretty much in every home as walls are brick and concrete. Wood, plastic, or drywall are rather uncommon construction materials for walls here.
This also means that drilling a hole in ten seconds doesn't work often.
This doesn't seem that surprising given that a hole takes ~10 seconds to drill... ie. if you have 10 projects over the course of a few years that need a handful of holes each, it's probably still worth it to buy a drill, unless borrowing one happens to be very convenient...
Lots of people buy stuff like a drill, use it once, and never use it again for years. They can do it because equipment like this is dirt cheap; it's worth the cost of the item to solve the initial problem; it's a bonus if it ever gets used again.
Yeah. That's really a bad example. If you ever do just about any amount of housework a good cordless drill and the associated bits are the one piece of power tool gear you'll pull out on a regular basis. I have various things out in my workshop I use rarely but the drill (and my Dremel) are in my closet and get pulled out all the time.
