Typical isn’t it; half way through installing your new kitchen stuff, the cordless screwdriver you’ve had for years but only used occasionally (until now) gives up the ghost! It wasn’t a hugely expensive one, just a Performance Power one (pretty naff company by the sounds of it) but it did the job and it had a variable torque feature which came in quite useful.

So, off to Homebase I went to see what they’d got. Not a great choice to be honest; a couple of really cheap ones that hadn’t got the torque control, or more expensive (e.g. Bosch, Black & Decker) that still didn’t have the torque control! What about Screwfix? They had a fairly lowly specified Energer model at £15.00 but then the rest either didn’t have the torque control or were beyond my budget (I’d hoped to get one for < £25.00).

Time to search the net then…

What I found was this Ryobi one from B&Q at £24.98. Not only did it have the torque control I wanted, it was the right sort of price and it’s a cool colour! I’ve never bought any Ryobi products before so I don’t know what they’re like but I’ve read a couple of comments here and there that say they tend to be reasonable for DIY so here’s hoping. Interestingly Screwfix have a similar model but at a £20.00 premium over the B&Q one for what appears to be a slightly higher capacity battery!

Ah well – back to the grind tomorrow now that I’ve got the tools to continue….

Ho hum.