Daniel sent us this one — the first proper deep-dive in the DIY inventory series. The overview episode laid out the tiered system, and now we're building Tier 1 from the ground up. The question is: what are the twenty to thirty items that stop eighty percent of common household projects from stalling? We're talking furniture assembly, shelving, cable management, minor repairs. And the wrinkle — this is for a home in Israel, where you're dealing with four different wall substrates: reinforced concrete, solid masonry, hollow block, and drywall. Daniel wants exact sizes, exact quantities, and a clear call on when to buy bulk versus when an assortment kit actually makes sense.
This is the episode where we stop being vague. No "keep some anchors around." We're going to give you a shopping list you can literally write down. But first we need to define what Tier 1 actually is, because it's not just a general hardware stash.
Tier 1 is a curated survival kit. It's the twenty to thirty items where, if you're missing one, the project stops. You're halfway through mounting a shelf on a hollow block wall and the nylon plug just spins in the cavity because there's nothing behind it to grip. You need a universal anchor, and you don't have one. That's the gap. Tier 1 closes that gap for the most common jobs.
The Israeli wall situation is what makes this list specific. In a lot of countries you've got timber studs and drywall, maybe some brick. Here you've got reinforced concrete — often Ytong or similar aerated blocks — solid masonry, hollow ceramic or concrete blocks, and drywall partitions. Each one demands completely different fixings. If you only stock for drywall, you're helpless the moment you hit concrete. If you only stock for concrete, you're overkill and frustrated on hollow block.
The list has to cover all four substrates with minimal overlap. And that's where the big tradeoff of the episode comes in: assortment kits versus bulk packs.
Let's put numbers on that tradeoff right now. A typical assortment kit might give you a hundred screws across twenty sizes — so maybe five of each. A four-by-thirty millimeter wood screw in an assortment works out to about thirty agorot per screw. Buy a bulk pack of a hundred of just that size, and you're down to about ten agorot per screw. The assortment gives you coverage. The bulk pack gives you depth on the sizes you actually burn through.
The principle is: assortments for the oddball sizes you might need once a year, bulk for the five sizes you reach for every other weekend. And we're going to apply that logic to every category.
Starting with the most common category: screws. Here's exactly what sizes to stock and why.
Let's begin with wood screws. These are your workhorse for furniture assembly, attaching to softwood, general indoor use. The sizes that matter in Israel are four-by-thirty, four-by-forty, and four-by-sixty millimeter — all in bulk hundred-packs. Then five-by-fifty and five-by-seventy in fifty-packs for heavier jobs like securing a bench top or a thick shelf bracket into a wooden stud.
I want to pause on the four-by-thirty specifically. If you've ever assembled IKEA furniture and lost one of their provided screws, you know the pain. A four-by-thirty wood screw is the universal replacement for most flat-pack hardware. An assortment kit gives you maybe ten of that size. A bulk pack of a hundred costs the same total and saves you a trip to the hardware store the next time you're building a cabinet. That's the exact logic of Tier 1.
The other thing — buy zinc-plated or stainless. Not raw steel. Raw steel screws will rust indoors within a year in Israel's coastal humidity. You don't need the premium brand here. Generic zinc-plated from a reputable hardware supplier is fine.
Next, general-purpose construction screws. These are the bigger siblings — six-by-sixty, six-by-eighty, and six-by-one-hundred millimeter, in fifty-packs. These are for attaching to timber studs, plywood, or building a workbench. They've got a coarser thread than wood screws and often a self-countersinking head. You want the Torx or Pozidriv drive if you can get it — Phillips strips too easily at these sizes.
Here's a category people overlook: short self-tapping screws. Three-point-five-by-twelve and three-point-five-by-sixteen millimeter, in hundred-packs. These are for metal-to-metal or plastic-to-metal — think mounting a network switch to a metal bracket, or securing a plastic cable tray to a metal frame. They cut their own thread as they go in.
Related but distinct: sheet-metal screws. Four-by-twenty and four-by-thirty millimeter, in fifty-packs. These have a sharper point and finer thread than general construction screws. They're for ductwork, thin metal enclosures, appliance repair. If your air conditioner duct has come loose from its flange, this is what you need.
Then the category that confuses people: self-drilling Tek screws. These have a little drill-bit tip that eliminates the need for pre-drilling. Five-point-five-by-twenty-five and five-point-five-by-thirty-eight millimeter, in fifty-packs. They're for attaching to steel studs or thin sheet metal. In Israel, a lot of newer apartments use steel studs for interior partitions, and if you try to drive a regular screw into those, you'll just spin and curse.
The Tek screw drills its own pilot hole and then taps its own thread. But you need an impact driver or at least a drill with decent torque — a twelve-volt screwdriver won't cut it on steel studs.
To recap the screw drawer: four-by-thirty, four-by-forty, four-by-sixty wood screws in hundred-packs. Five-by-fifty and five-by-seventy in fifty-packs. Six-by-sixty, six-by-eighty, six-by-one-hundred construction screws in fifty-packs. The short self-tappers in hundred-packs. Sheet-metal in fifty-packs. Tek screws in fifty-packs. That's your screw foundation.
Now let's move to machine screws, nuts, washers, and locking hardware. This is the category that rescues you when an appliance foot falls off or a desk grommet loosens.
M4 and M5 are the universal adapter sizes for electronics and small brackets. You want M4-by-twenty, M4-by-thirty, M5-by-twenty, and M5-by-thirty millimeter — all in fifty-packs. Stainless steel if you can, zinc-plated at minimum.
For each, you need matching hex nuts, flat washers, and spring washers. Fifty-packs of each. The flat washer distributes load so the nut doesn't dig into the material. The spring washer — the split ring type — provides tension to resist loosening. But here's the thing: spring washers are not great at actually preventing loosening under vibration. That's where nylon-insert lock nuts come in.
The nylon-insert lock nut has a little ring of nylon inside the top of the nut. When you thread it on, the nylon deforms around the bolt threads and creates friction. It doesn't back off. These are Tier 1 for anything that vibrates — washing machine feet, desk grommets, a ceiling fan bracket. You want M4, M5, and M6 nylon-insert lock nuts, twenty to fifty of each depending on how much you tinker.
I'll say this: for machine screws and nuts, the no-name marketplace stuff is usually fine. The tolerances on M4 and M5 are loose enough that even cheap manufacturers hit them. Where you don't cheap out is on anything load-bearing — but we'll get to concrete screws.
One more thing in this category: if you're doing anything with electronics, get yourself some M3 machine screws too. M3-by-ten and M3-by-sixteen, in fifty-packs, with matching nuts and washers. They're the standard for mounting circuit boards, SSDs, small brackets inside computers. Tiny, cheap, and absolutely project-stopping when you don't have them.
Now let's move to the fixings that actually hold things to your walls — concrete, masonry, and drywall.
This is where the substrate problem really bites. Let's start with nylon expansion plugs for concrete and solid masonry. The three sizes you need: six-by-thirty, eight-by-forty, and ten-by-fifty millimeter. All in bulk hundred-packs. The six-by-thirty is your everyday plug for curtain rods, light shelves, cable clips. The eight-by-forty handles medium shelving. The ten-by-fifty is for heavier brackets.
Here's the critical distinction: these are for concrete and solid masonry only. If you put a standard nylon expansion plug into hollow block, it has nothing to expand against. The cavity behind the face of the block is empty. The plug just spins. You drill the hole, tap the plug in, drive the screw, and the whole assembly rotates uselessly in the void.
Which is exactly the scenario Daniel described in his prompt. For hollow block, you need universal nylon anchors. These are designed with wings or a toggle mechanism that expands behind the cavity. Eight-by-forty and ten-by-fifty millimeter, in fifty-packs. When you tighten the screw, the anchor collapses into a knot behind the wall surface. It's the difference between a shelf that holds and a shelf that pulls out of the wall the first time you put a book on it.
For heavy loads in concrete — above fifteen kilograms — you skip plugs entirely and go to concrete screws. These are the blue screws you see in hardware stores, usually with a hex head. They cut threads directly into the concrete. No plug needed. You drill a hole with a masonry bit, then drive the screw in with an impact driver. The pull-out strength is up to three times what you get from a nylon plug.
The sizes: M8 by seven-point-five-by-seventy-two and seven-point-five-by-ninety-two millimeter, in fifty-packs. Also M6 by six-point-three-by-fifty for lighter concrete jobs. Now here's the safety warning: do not use an M6 concrete screw for a TV mount. M6 concrete screws have a shear rating around twenty kilograms. A large TV on an articulated mount can exert much more than that in leverage. You want M8 or even M10 for anything heavy and cantilevered.
That's a misconception worth busting hard. People see "concrete screw" and assume they're all the same. They're not. M6 versus M8 versus M10 are completely different load classes. Using an M6 where you need an M8 is dangerous. The screw shears, the TV comes down, someone gets hurt.
For concrete screws, brand matters. Fischer, Hilti, or at least a known Israeli brand like Kinar. The metallurgy on generic concrete screws can be inconsistent, and you don't want to discover a brittle screw when you're torqueing it into reinforced concrete.
Four types for Tier 1. First, basic plastic expansion anchors — four-by-twenty millimeter, in fifty-packs. These are for light loads under five kilos: towel bars, small picture frames. They're cheap and you'll use them constantly.
Second, metal self-drilling drywall anchors — six-by-thirty millimeter, in thirty-packs. These screw directly into the drywall without pre-drilling and hold up to fifteen kilos. Great for small shelves, coat hooks, bathroom accessories.
Third, Molly bolts — also called cavity anchors — in M4, M5, and M6, twenty-packs each. These are for heavier loads up to twenty-five kilos in drywall: mirrors, larger shelves, coat racks. You drill a hole, insert the anchor, and as you tighten the screw, metal wings collapse behind the drywall to create a large bearing surface.
I'll say it: skip the cheap plastic toggle anchors you see in assortment kits. They're the avocado of wall anchors — ubiquitous, rarely questioned, and they fail exactly when you've finished the project and stepped back to admire it. Molly bolts or nothing for anything over five kilos in drywall.
Fourth, and this is a niche but important one for Israel: cavity anchors for hollow block that are rated for heavier loads than universal nylon anchors. If you're mounting a kitchen cabinet on a hollow block wall, you want metal cavity anchors, not plastic. The brand to look for is Fischer DuoPower or similar — they combine expansion and knotting in one anchor and work across multiple substrates.
The wall-fixing decision tree is: identify your wall type, estimate your load, then pick the fixing. Concrete under fifteen kilos? Nylon expansion plug. Concrete over fifteen kilos? Universal nylon anchor or metal cavity anchor. Drywall under five kilos? Plastic expansion anchor. Drywall five to fifteen kilos? Metal self-drilling. Drywall fifteen to twenty-five kilos? That's the logic.
Now let's cover nails, hooks, and brackets — the categories that feel old-fashioned but still solve real problems.
Common nails: two-point-five-by-fifty and three-point-one-by-seventy-five millimeter, in two-hundred-gram boxes. These are for rough framing, temporary holds, or attaching furring strips. They're not precision fasteners, but when you need to tack something in place while glue dries, nothing replaces them.
Brad nails, also called panel pins: one-point-two-by-twenty-five and one-point-six-by-forty millimeter, in hundred-gram boxes. These are for trim work, small woodworking, attaching thin back panels to cabinets. They've got a tiny head that leaves a nearly invisible hole.
Masonry nails: three-by-forty and four-by-sixty millimeter, in hundred-gram boxes. These are hardened steel nails you hammer directly into concrete or mortar joints. But — and this is important — they're only for light duty under five kilos. Attaching a furring strip to a concrete wall before plastering, or securing a small cable clip into a mortar joint. For anything structural, you use concrete screws. Masonry nails are Tier 1 because they're fast and cheap for those specific light-duty jobs, but you need to know their limits.
If you try to hammer a masonry nail into reinforced concrete, you'll either bend the nail or chip the concrete. They work best in mortar joints between blocks, which are softer. And even then, they're not for anything load-bearing.
Hooks and eyes: four-by-thirty and five-by-forty millimeter screw eyes, in twenty-packs. Cup hooks, three-by-twenty millimeter, in thirty-packs. These are for hanging tools on a pegboard, keys by the door, plants from the ceiling, cables under a desk. They're tiny, cheap, and you never think to buy them until you're holding a plant and staring at a bare ceiling.
Small corner braces: twenty-five-by-twenty-five and forty-by-forty millimeter, in ten-packs. Mending plates: fifty-by-one-hundred millimeter, in five-packs. These are for reinforcing furniture joints, repairing a broken chair leg, or adding rigidity to a shelf. The corner brace is the unsung hero of furniture repair — when an IKEA cabinet starts to wobble, two corner braces on the back corners add years to its life.
They cost almost nothing. A ten-pack of twenty-five-by-twenty-five millimeter corner braces is maybe twelve shekels. That's the kind of Tier 1 logic we're applying: the cost of not having it is a broken piece of furniture. The cost of having it is negligible.
Now cable management hardware. This category is huge for anyone doing networking or home office setup, and it's where most people improvise badly.
Screw-mounted cable clips: six, eight, and ten millimeter diameters, in twenty-packs each. These are for routing network cables along baseboards or walls. The key word is screw-mounted. Adhesive clips will fail on rough concrete or painted masonry within weeks, especially in Israel's summer heat. You drill a small hole, insert a six-millimeter nylon plug, and screw the clip in. It's permanent.
P-clips: six, eight, and ten millimeter, in twenty-packs. These are the metal or plastic loops that wrap around a cable and have a screw hole. They're for securing cables to walls, under desks, or inside cabinets. Much cleaner than zip-tying everything to random anchor points.
Cable ties: one hundred, two hundred, and three hundred millimeter lengths, in hundred-packs. The hundred-millimeter is for small bundles inside a computer case. The two-hundred-millimeter is your general-purpose tie for desk cable management. The three-hundred-millimeter is for bundling larger cable runs or securing things to poles. Buy black, not white. White cable ties yellow and become brittle in sunlight.
For permanent cable routing, you want adhesive and screw-mounted cable-tie bases, ten-packs of each. The adhesive ones are fine for smooth surfaces like the underside of a desk. The screw-mounted ones are for walls and rough surfaces. You thread a cable tie through the base, bundle your cables, and pull tight. It's the cleanest way to run cables along a wall without visible clips every ten centimeters.
Now basic electrical consumables. This is the category that feels specialist but absolutely belongs in Tier 1 because the items are tiny, cheap, and stop a project dead when missing.
Heat-shrink tubing: one-point-five, three, and six millimeter diameters, one-meter lengths of each. The one-point-five is for individual wire insulation. The three-millimeter covers most small solder joints and wire splices. The six-millimeter handles thicker cables or bundling multiple wires. You need a heat gun or at least a hairdryer to shrink it — a lighter works in a pinch but leaves soot.
Electrical ferrules: zero-point-five, one-point-oh, and two-point-five square millimeter, fifty-packs each. These are the little metal tubes you crimp onto the end of stranded wire before inserting it into a screw terminal. Without a ferrule, the screw terminal can cut individual strands, reducing the connection quality and creating a fire risk. With a ferrule, you get a solid, gas-tight connection.
Ferrules require a crimping tool, but a basic ratcheting crimper is forty shekels and worth every agora. Don't use pliers — you'll get an inconsistent crimp that can pull loose.
Lever-style wire connectors: two-wire, three-wire, and five-wire, ten-packs each. These are the Wago-style connectors with an orange lever. You lift the lever, insert the stripped wire, and snap the lever down. That's it. No twisting, no tape, no screwdriver. They're rated for up to thirty-two amps and accept wire from zero-point-one-four to four square millimeters.
This is where I want to address the wire nut misconception. Wire nuts are the traditional twist-on connectors. They work if installed correctly, but they can loosen over time due to thermal cycling — wires heat up, cool down, expand, contract. Lever connectors maintain constant spring pressure. They're also reusable — lift the lever, remove the wire, reinsert. For a DIYer who might need to reconfigure something, that's huge.
They're more expensive per unit — maybe two shekels per connector versus fifty agorot for a wire nut — but we're talking about a total investment of maybe sixty shekels for enough connectors to do every light fixture and outlet repair in an apartment. Safety-critical, cheap, and they remove skill from the equation. That's exactly where Tier 1 should spend money.
Common grommets: ten, sixteen, and twenty millimeter inner diameter, in ten-packs. These are the rubber or plastic rings that snap into desk cable holes to protect cables from sharp edges. Without a grommet, a network cable rubbing against a metal desk hole will eventually wear through the jacket.
Rubber feet: eight, twelve, and sixteen millimeter diameter, twenty-packs each. Self-adhesive, for protecting floors from furniture legs, stopping a keyboard from sliding, or dampening vibration on a speaker. They're the item you don't think about until you notice a scratch on your floor.
What does this all add up to? Here are the concrete shopping lists you need.
Let's start with the "buy first" list for someone starting with nothing. This is the minimum viable Tier 1 that covers eighty percent of common jobs across all four Israeli wall substrates. Write this down. One hundred four-by-thirty millimeter wood screws. One hundred six-by-thirty millimeter nylon expansion plugs. Fifty seven-point-five-by-seventy-two millimeter concrete screws. Fifty M4-by-twenty millimeter machine screws with matching nuts and washers. One hundred two-hundred-millimeter cable ties. And a set of lever connectors — two-wire, three-wire, and five-wire, ten of each.
That list is maybe a hundred and fifty shekels total, and it gets you through furniture assembly, basic shelving on concrete, light drywall jobs, cable management, and minor electrical repairs. It's the foundation. Everything else builds on it.
The compact version for limited storage: buy the same items but in smaller quantities — fifty-packs instead of hundred-packs where possible — and put everything in a single twenty-four-compartment small-parts organizer. You can fit the entire Tier 1 in a box the size of a shoebox. Label each compartment with the size and type. The labeling is not optional — if you can't find it, you don't have it.
The generous version for minimizing trips: double all quantities and add hundred-packs of eight-by-forty millimeter nylon plugs, eight-by-ninety-two millimeter concrete screws, and three-hundred-millimeter cable ties. Add a fifty-pack of M5-by-twenty machine screws with nuts and washers. This fills a medium tool bag and means you essentially never run out mid-project.
The top ten Tier 1 items most likely to rescue a stalled project. Number one: four-by-thirty millimeter wood screws. Number two: six-by-thirty millimeter nylon expansion plugs. Number three: seven-point-five-by-seventy-two millimeter concrete screws. Number four: M4-by-twenty machine screws with nuts. Number five: two-hundred-millimeter cable ties. Number six: lever-style wire connectors. Number seven: eight-by-forty millimeter universal nylon anchors. Number eight: metal self-drilling drywall anchors. Number nine: three-millimeter heat-shrink tubing. Number ten: twenty-five-by-twenty-five millimeter corner braces.
Every one of those items is something where, if you don't have it, the project stops right there. Not slows down — stops. And the total cost of those ten items is probably under two hundred shekels.
Now, storage and replenishment. The system only works if you maintain it. When you finish a project and you've used your last six-by-thirty nylon plug, put the empty bag on your phone case or stick a note on the fridge. Restock that week. The Tier 1 kit is a living inventory, not a one-time purchase.
Label everything with both the size and the date you bought it. Some items — especially nylon anchors and cable ties — can degrade over years, particularly if stored in a hot Israeli apartment without climate control. Nylon gets brittle. If you're pulling out anchors you bought five years ago and they snap when you squeeze them, replace the batch.
That's your Tier 1 kit. But before we wrap, I want to leave you with one question.
What's the one Tier 1 item you've been burned by not having? The screw, the anchor, the connector that was missing when you needed it most? We want to hear those stories — they'll shape what we emphasize in Tier 2.
Because Tier 2 is coming, and it's going to cover plumbing, electrical, and specialty fasteners. Tier 3 after that — adhesives, sealants, and tapes. Tier 4 will be the project-specific deep stash. But Tier 1 is the foundation. If you stock this list, you will finish more projects on the same day you start them. That's the whole point.
Thanks to our producer Hilbert Flumingtop. This has been My Weird Prompts. Tell us your missing-hardware horror stories — email the show at show at my weird prompts dot com.
Or don't, and just enjoy the satisfaction of having the right screw the next time you need it.
And now: Hilbert's daily fun fact.
Hilbert: In the nineteen twenties, a British expedition in Somaliland documented a rare atmospheric phenomenon known as the green ray — a brief flash of emerald light visible at the moment the sun's upper limb disappears below a perfectly clear horizon — only to have the observation dismissed for decades as optical illusion until satellite imagery confirmed the refractive mechanism in the nineteen nineties.
It was real the whole time.
Vindication, half a century late.
