Daniel sent us this one — it's the next chapter in the DIY hardware deep-dive he's been building. Tier 1 covered the everyday essentials: wood screws, machine screws, wall plugs, the stuff that gets you through seventy percent of apartment tasks. Now he wants Tier 2 — the next layer. The hardware you don't reach for daily, but when you need it, nothing else works, and the wrong choice means a collapsed shelf or a stripped hole. He wants a full bill of materials: cavity anchors, blind rivets, threaded inserts, cable management, the works. Specific sizes, quantities, where to spend versus save, and what's rental-friendly. This is the episode where we stop you making three trips to the hardware store per project.
Honestly, this is the layer where most DIYers stall out. They've got a drawer of wood screws and wall plugs, they feel equipped, then they try to hang a fifty-inch TV on a hollow wall and suddenly they're staring at a wobbling bracket with no idea what to do next. Tier 2 is the gap-filler. It's not about building a workshop — it's about having the exact fastener for the job the first time.
What exactly separates Tier 2 from Tier 1? Where's the line?
Tier 1 is your universal layer. A box of number eight by one-and-a-quarter-inch wood screws, M4 through M6 machine screws with matching nuts and washers, basic plastic wall plugs, some drywall fixings. That kit handles hanging pictures, assembling flat-pack furniture, mounting lightweight shelves into studs. It's the stuff you use every other weekend. Tier 2 is capability, not volume. These are fasteners for specific failure modes — hollow walls with no stud, particleboard that's stripped out, sheet metal you can't access the back of, cables that need to pass through a panel without fraying. You might not touch your snap toggles for six months, but the night you need them, it's ten PM and the hardware store closed at eight.
That's the real metric, isn't it? Tier 2 is what stops the ten PM despair.
So let's start with the category that will save you the most headaches: cavity anchors for hollow walls. This is the backbone of Tier 2, and it's where most people get it wrong because they assume all drywall anchors are the same. They're not.
I've got strong feelings here. I've pulled toggle bolts out of old plasterboard that someone installed with nothing but hope and a prayer.
Let's break down the three types you actually need. First, molly bolts. These are your medium-load workhorse. A molly bolt expands behind the drywall as you tighten it, creating a metal sleeve that grips the back of the wallboard. For standard half-inch drywall — that's twelve-point-five millimeters — you're looking at fifteen to thirty pounds per anchor in shear, but only ten to fifteen pounds in pull-out. The pull-out number is the one that bites people, because weight on a shelf isn't pure shear — it's levering outward at the top.
A thirty-pound mirror hung on two molly bolts might be fine if it's flush, but a shelf sticking out twelve inches with books on it?
The moment arm multiplies the force. For molly bolts, I recommend a twenty-pack of M6 or quarter-twenty size rated for half-inch drywall. You need a drill for the pilot hole and a screwdriver to set them. They're rental-friendly — they leave about a twelve-millimeter hole, which is patchable with spackle and touch-up paint. The common mistake: using them in drywall that's too thin. If your wallboard is three-eighths of an inch instead of half, the molly will spin and strip before it ever grabs. Always check wall thickness before buying.
If you're in an older building with actual plaster and lath, forget mollies entirely. The lath splinters and the whole thing turns into a crater.
Which brings us to toggle bolts and snap toggles. These are for heavy loads — fifty to seventy-five pounds per anchor in half-inch drywall. Snap toggles, like the Toggler brand, are superior to traditional spring toggles because they don't rattle loose and they're dramatically easier to install. With a spring toggle, you're threading the bolt through your fixture, folding the wings, shoving it through the hole, and hoping the wings deploy correctly on the other side. With a snap toggle, the toggle body goes in first, it snaps open behind the wall, and then you drive the bolt through your fixture and into the waiting toggle. It's idiot-proof.
Which is important, because I am, on occasion, an idiot.
We all have our moments. For snap toggles, I recommend a ten-pack rated for half-inch to five-eighths drywall. The critical spec here is the safety factor for dynamic loads. A TV mount isn't a static picture frame — it gets adjusted, bumped, vibrated. The industry recommendation is a four-to-one safety factor. So a forty-five-pound TV needs anchors that can collectively hold at least a hundred and eighty pounds. Four snap toggles rated at seventy-five pounds each gives you three hundred pounds of capacity, which is a six-to-one factor. That's comfortable.
The hole they leave? Also patchable, but you're not hiding that with toothpaste. You need actual spackle.
Then there's the third category: self-drilling drywall anchors, the E-Z Ancor type. These are for light-to-medium loads, twenty to thirty pounds. They screw directly into the drywall without a pilot hole — just a screwdriver. They're Tier 2 because Tier 1 covers basic plastic plugs, but these give you significantly more grip for things like curtain rods, towel bars, or lightweight shelving. I recommend a twenty-five-pack of the fifty-pound-rated ones. They leave the smallest hole of any anchor type, trivial to patch. These are the most rental-friendly option for anything under thirty pounds.
One more category Daniel mentioned: frame fixings. These are the long plug-and-screw combos for masonry or brick walls. When would I reach for those instead of a standard wall plug?
When you're mounting something heavy into solid brick or concrete and Tier 1 plugs are too short to reach past the plaster layer into the structural material. A standard wall plug is maybe thirty millimeters long. A frame fixing is eighty to a hundred and twenty millimeters — it goes deep into the brick. You need these for shelving brackets on masonry walls, heavy coat racks, anything bearing real weight. I recommend a ten-pack of eight-by-fifty-millimeter or ten-by-sixty-millimeter frame fixings. You'll need a hammer drill with a masonry bit. They're permanent in practice — you can cut them flush and patch over, but you're not pulling that plug out of the brick.
For the quick reference: picture frame under twenty pounds, self-drilling anchor. Mirror or medium shelf, molly bolt. TV mount or anything heavy and dynamic, snap toggles. Masonry wall, frame fixings.
That's the decision tree. Now let's move to a category that intimidates people but is actually one of the simplest and most satisfying things in Tier 2: blind rivets.
I love pop rivets. There's something deeply satisfying about that snap when the mandrel breaks.
It's the sound of a permanent mechanical bond. Blind rivets are for joining sheet metal, plastic, fiberglass, even thick cardboard — any thin material where you can't access the back side. The key spec is grip range. A rivet has to be long enough to pass through all the layers and still have enough material to form the blind head. If your grip range is too short, the mandrel pulls through without clamping. If it's too long, the rivet bends instead of compressing.
If I'm joining two layers of eighth-inch sheet metal, what am I buying?
Two layers of eighth-inch is a quarter-inch total thickness. You want a rivet with a grip range that spans that — typically a three-sixteenths-inch diameter rivet with a quarter-inch grip range. The common mistake is buying rivets that are too short because you measured the hole depth but forgot to account for the fact that the rivet body needs to extend past the far side before it deforms. I recommend a hundred-piece assortment kit with sizes in three-sixteenths and one-eighth-inch diameters, aluminum and steel, grip ranges from eighth-inch to half-inch. You'll also need a hand riveter — fifteen to twenty-five dollars for a perfectly serviceable one. Projects: mounting cable trays under a desk, repairing metal cabinets, attaching brackets to metal studs. For rentals, rivets are removable with a drill but you wouldn't typically use them on apartment surfaces. They're more for your own furniture and projects.
This is a category where generic assortments are fine, right? I don't need brand-name rivets.
For general DIY, absolutely. The quality variation between brands for standard aluminum blind rivets is minimal. Save your money here. Now, threaded inserts for wood — this is where brand starts to matter.
This is the IKEA-hack category.
Threaded inserts are metal sleeves with internal machine threads and external wood threads. You drill a pilot hole, screw the insert in with a hex key, and now you've got a reusable machine thread in wood or particleboard. The screw-in type, like E-Z Lok, is what you want for furniture. They require a pilot hole half a millimeter smaller than the insert's outer diameter. In particleboard — which is what most flat-pack furniture is made of — you need coarse-thread versions. Fine threads will strip out under load.
This is the fix for when the cam lock on your Malm dresser gives up and the whole thing goes wobbly.
That's the case study. You replace the factory cam locks with M6 screw-in inserts and machine screws, and suddenly that wobbly dresser is solid. The inserts are permanent but invisible if installed flush. I recommend a twenty-pack each of M6 and M8 screw-in inserts. For particleboard, specifically look for the coarse-thread versions — sometimes labeled as "for softwood and composite." For hardwood or plywood, the standard thread pitch is fine. This is one category where I'd spend for a known brand. Cheap inserts have inconsistent thread geometry and can cross-thread or snap during installation.
While we're in furniture territory — connector bolts, barrel nuts, cross dowels. The hidden fasteners in flat-pack furniture.
These are the ones that roll under the couch during assembly and vanish into another dimension. If you lose one, the whole piece is unstable because these are the primary structural connections. A fifty-piece mixed kit of M6 by thirty-millimeter bolts with matching barrel nuts costs about ten dollars and will cover ninety percent of flat-pack emergencies. You just need an Allen key to install. This is firmly a generic assortment purchase — the tolerances are standardized enough that brand doesn't matter.
Let's talk about the vibration-fighting category. Nyloc nuts, wing nuts, thumb screws, specialist washers.
Nyloc nuts are lock nuts with a nylon insert that grips the bolt threads. They're for anything that vibrates — washing machines, 3D printers, bike racks, equipment racks. The nylon insert deforms around the threads and prevents the nut from backing off. They're reusable about five to ten times before the nylon loses its grip — after that, replace them. I recommend a twenty-pack each of M4, M5, and M6. For most household applications, these are a better choice than thread-locking compound because they're removable with hand tools and don't require heat to break the bond.
Herman, you've mentioned before that you prefer spring washers over Nyloc nuts for general inventory. Has that changed?
I still prefer spring washers for general inventory because they're infinitely reusable and take up less space. But for applications where you know vibration is the primary failure pattern — a washing machine, a bike rack on a car — Nylocs are the right tool. They're more secure than spring washers in sustained vibration. The spring washer is your generalist; the Nyloc is your specialist.
That's a good distinction. What about wing nuts and thumb screws?
These are for tool-less adjustments. Anything you need to tighten or loosen by hand regularly — a camera mount, a temporary jig, a 3D printer bed adjustment. I recommend a ten-pack of M6 wing nuts and a ten-pack of M6 thumb screws. Generic is fine here. Then there are fender washers — these have an oversized outer diameter compared to standard washers. For an M6 bolt, a standard washer has a twelve-millimeter outer diameter. A fender washer is eighteen millimeters. That's two and a quarter times the surface area, which spreads the load and prevents the bolt head from pulling through soft materials like plastic or thin sheet metal. I recommend a twenty-pack of M6 fender washers. They're cheap insurance against pull-through failure.
Eye screws, hooks, cup hooks — the hanging-hardware category.
These are for organizing cables under a desk, hanging plants, kitchen utensils, tools on a pegboard, lightweight items where you need an attachment point. A ten-pack of number eight or number ten screw eyes and a ten-pack of half-inch cup hooks covers most needs. They leave tiny holes, completely rental-friendly. Generic assortments are fine — there's not much engineering in a cup hook.
Small brackets, mending plates, corner braces. The furniture-repair category.
These are the unsung heroes of Tier 2. A wobbly chair, a sagging shelf bracket, two boards you need to join at a right angle — flat mending plates and corner braces solve these in minutes. I recommend a ten-pack of two-inch flat mending plates and a ten-pack of one-inch corner braces. They come with screws, but the included screws are usually soft — swap them for your Tier 1 wood screws. These are generic purchases, and they're rental-friendly in the sense that you can remove them, but the screw holes will need patching.
Now we get to cable management — cable glands, strain-relief fittings, screw-mounted cable clamps. This is the modern-apartment category.
It's the one most people don't think about until they've got Ethernet cables snaking through a hole in the wall with no protection. Cable glands seal around a cable where it passes through a panel or wall plate, providing strain relief and dust protection. The sizing is the tricky part. PG9 fits cables four to eight millimeters in diameter. PG11 fits five to ten millimeters. PG stands for Panzergewinde — it's an older German standard, still common in the US. The metric system, M16 and M20, is more common in Europe. For most home networking and desk setups, PG9 and PG11 cover your needs. I recommend a ten-pack of each in nylon. For adhesive-backed screw-mount cable clamps, get a twenty-pack — these are brilliant for routing cables along the underside of a desk or behind a media console.
I've used those clamps to turn a rat's nest under my desk into something that looks almost intentional.
Cable management is the difference between "I built this" and "a professional installed this." The glands require a hole in the panel, so they're semi-permanent. The adhesive clamps are removable with a bit of heat and patience. For rentals, the clamps are the safer bet — stick them to your own furniture, not the wall.
Spacers, standoffs, bushings. The alignment category.
These are hex-shaped pillars with threaded holes, used to create precise gaps between panels or mount circuit boards. If you're building a custom electronics enclosure, a 3D printer, or even just spacing a shelf away from a wall for cable clearance, standoffs are what you need. I recommend a twenty-pack each of M3, M4, and M6 nylon or aluminum hex standoffs in ten-millimeter and twenty-millimeter lengths. Nylon is fine for most applications and won't short electronics. Generic assortments are perfectly adequate here.
The final category — assorted springs, pins, clips, retaining hardware. This feels like the "only if you repair appliances" section.
This is genuinely useful only if you fix things with moving parts — toasters, lawn mowers, bicycles, mechanical jigs. A small fifty-piece assortment of E-clips, cotter pins, and compression springs in the ten-to-twenty-millimeter length range and five-to-ten-millimeter diameter range covers most household mechanical repairs. If you've never opened up a broken appliance, skip this category for now. If you have, you know the pain of losing an E-clip and having to buy a pack of fifty to replace one.
We've covered a lot of hardware. Let me distill it into the ten items that will save your next project.
This is the cheat sheet. Number one: snap toggles for heavy hollow-wall mounts — TVs, large mirrors, floating shelves with real weight. Number two: molly bolts for medium loads where you might want to relocate later. Number three: blind rivets and a hand riveter for metal and plastic joins — once you own a riveter, you'll find uses for it. Number four: threaded inserts for furniture reinforcement — the IKEA hack that actually works. Number five: a furniture connector bolt kit for flat-pack repairs — ten dollars that saves you a wobbly bookshelf. Number six: Nyloc nuts for vibration-prone assemblies — washing machines, bike racks, anything that shakes. Number seven: fender washers for spreading load and preventing pull-through. Number eight: cable glands and clamps for clean network and desk setups. Number nine: frame fixings for masonry walls. Number ten: a small assortment of mending plates and corner braces for furniture repair.
Where should people spend versus save?
Spend on cavity anchors — Toggler brand for snap toggles, genuine Fischer or Simpson for molly bolts. Spend on threaded inserts — E-Z Lok or equivalent known brand. The failure pattern on cheap anchors and inserts is catastrophic: the thing falls off the wall or the thread strips out. Save on generic assortments for blind rivets, cable glands, spacers, and furniture connector bolts — the quality variation is minimal and the cost difference is enormous. You can get a hundred-piece blind rivet kit for what ten brand-name rivets would cost.
Rental-friendly rule of thumb: if it leaves a hole larger than a quarter-inch, you'll need to patch it. Snap toggles and molly bolts are patchable with spackle and paint. Frame fixings in masonry are permanent but can be cut flush and covered. Self-drilling anchors leave the smallest hole. And for anything adhesive, test it on an inconspicuous spot first — some of those cable clamps will take the paint with them when they come off.
The next step is simple: buy one mixed kit for each category rather than individual sizes. A hundred-piece blind rivet assortment, a fifty-piece furniture bolt kit, a twenty-pack of molly bolts. You'll get coverage across all categories for under fifty dollars total. That's the whole Tier 2 investment.
That's your Tier 2 cheat sheet. But we're not done — Tier 3 is coming, and that's where we get into structural fasteners: lag bolts, concrete anchors, wedge anchors, the heavy-duty hardware for garage and outdoor projects where failure means property damage or injury.
Check the show notes for a printable PDF of the Tier 2 bill of materials with exact sizes and quantities. If you have a Tier 2 item you swear by that we missed, email the show — show at my weird prompts dot com. We might feature it in the next installment.
Now: Hilbert's daily fun fact.
Hilbert: In the 1840s, Russian explorers on Sakhalin Island discovered a species of blind cave cricket living inside lava tubes that had formed a symbiotic relationship with a bioluminescent fungus — the cricket spread the fungal spores on its legs, and the fungus provided the only light source in the pitch-black tunnels, attracting other insects the cricket could prey on.
The cricket was farming its own glow-in-the-dark bait. That's unsettling.
Nature really did invent everything first.
This has been My Weird Prompts. I'm Corn.
I'm Herman Poppleberry. Thanks to our producer Hilbert Flumingtop. If you found this useful, leave us a review wherever you listen — it helps more than you know. We'll be back soon with Tier 3.
Bring a hard hat.
