5 Milwaukee Tools That Could Be Useful To Renovate Your Bathroom

Of all the DIY projects you can undertake in the house, bathroom renovation ranks the highest in terms of difficulty. The presence of plumbing adds an entire dimension of waterproofing to everything you build or repair, while also demanding a higher degree of versatility from your skill-set as well as tool selection. While a typical bathroom renovation project requires a wide array of tools for success, we have curated a list of five of the best Milwaukee tools that will make the job easier.

Even if your bathroom isn't brimming with tech, it's still a complicated beast with plumbing, electricals, fixtures, and cabinetry warranting tools that walk the tightrope between performance and compactness. This list makes that distinction to recommend tools that have the speed, power, and versatility to tackle the wide array of materials and challenges encountered during bathroom improvement.

But before you jump into the fray, be sure to double-check if your existing bathroom doesn't have any asbestos products or linings. This is especially true for houses built prior to the '90s, where the presence of asbestos in the construction materials is likely. Call an asbestos abatement professional in that case. Asbestos or not, don't forget to wear eye protection, appropriate dust masks/respirators, and steel toed boots when using these tools.

Taking down old tiles, masonry, and brickwork is often the first step in bathroom renovation projects. Demolishing hard granite or ceramic tiles is not just physically exhausting, but it also produces razor sharp debris that's a laceration risk. Fortunately, SDS Plus rotary hammers from Milwaukee's M18 FUEL lineup make bathroom demolition a safe and effortless affair.

We recommend the M18 FUEL One-inch SDS Plus Rotary Hammer because it incorporates just the right degree of performance, portability, and safety features in a tool that's perfect for residential bathroom projects. But more importantly, it ships with a hammer only mode that allows you to slap on an SDS chisel attachment to take down tiles and brickwork alike.

The rotary hammer outputs 2 foot-pounds of impact energy at 4,800 bpm across 1,330 rpm. The brushless motor not only improves power, durability, and battery endurance, but it also incorporates Milwaukee's proprietary POWERSTATE system — which is a fancy trademark for a microprocessor-controlled power delivery system that intelligently achieves optimal performance by monitoring motor load and battery data to vary motor torque and power characteristics.

This M18 Fuel rotary hammer is also less likely to smack you in the face — all thanks to its capability to detect kickbacks using embedded accelerometers and shutting the tool off automatically to prevent injuries. The tool's SDS Plus attachment ecosystem also makes it easy to drill into hard concrete and brickwork using carbide-tipped masonry bits.

However, we recommend a more specialized tool for driving screws and drilling into wood and metal.

Choosing the right power tools is a delicate balance between performance and portability. We have recommended Milwaukee's SDS Plus rotary hammer for drilling into concrete, but lighter drilling and driving tasks in cramped bathroom cabinetry and fixtures calls for a nimbler tool. The Milwaukee M12 FUEL installation drill/driver is perfect for drilling into studs and fastening screws in tight corners otherwise inaccessible to even the most compact drill/drivers.

This lightweight (2 lb) modular drill/driver combination tool ships with four attachments, which include 3/8-inch drill chuck, 1/4-inch hex, right angle, and offset heads. The compact chuck features an adjustable clutch, which is indispensable for driving screws without damaging plastic, wood, and metal hardware. The right angle and offset heads can be further angled in 16 different positions to reach the most inaccessible locations encountered while working on bathroom cabinetry, ducting, HVAC, and electrical installations. The tool itself is quite compact at an overall length of 5.12-inch, with the top strategically designed flat to position it flush against surfaces for maximum flexibility during drilling and driving operations.

The Milwaukee installation drill/driver packs in 300 inch-pounds of torque despite its compact 12-volt underpinnings, which makes it easy to drill into wood and drywall. Like our previous tool recommendation, this one comes with the same POWERSTATE battery management system to maximize power while also maintaining optimal efficiency for longer runtimes. This tool has just the right blend of performance, versatility, compactness, and weight savings that make it ideal for bathroom renovations.

Most bathroom renovation projects require versatile cutting tools that can process different materials while also being small enough to maneuver in tight quarters and handle finer cuts. M12 FUEL 3-inch compact cut-off tool is just what the doc ordered thanks to its light weight (1.52 lb) and one-handed operation. This makes it ideal for making precision cuts in tiles, while also being convenient for sizing plastic pipes and metal brackets alike. Its small footprint and offset blade configuration provide a clear line-of-sight critical for making precision cuts.

Both the bare tool and the kit ship with a diamond tile blade and metal cut-off wheel suitable to handle most bathroom renovation tasks, whereas the included carbide abrasive wheel can cut through softer materials, such as drywall, plastics, and cement boards with ease. The kit includes a shoe guard, to control the depth of cut, which also doubles up as a vacuum adapter for dust collection. The tool's versatility is further bolstered by the tool-less blade guard that can be positioned at different angles to suit your cutting needs. The blade rotation itself can be reversed to control the direction of the cut and material removal.

Don't let its diminutive 7-inch span fool you. The 12-volt POWERSTATE brushless motor pairs with the 4 AH REDLITHIUM battery to deliver enough grunt at 20,000 RPM for all your cutting needs. What's more, even the bare tool includes the 7/16-inch flange adapter to repurpose existing Dremel Saw-Max accessories.

Bathroom renovations are often fraught with gotchas that stump even the most experienced DIYers, with complicated plumbing snaking through tight quarters and fasteners rusting shut. You're bound to encounter toilet bolts and faucet nuts that must be cut off, or plumbing that can't be removed with conventional tools. These challenges are best tackled with an oscillating multi-tool because its blade can cut flush along surfaces without requiring any wiggle room to accommodate the reciprocating or rotation action otherwise required by conventional cutting tools.

The Milwaukee M18 FUEL oscillating multi-tool delivers quick cuts with its POWERSTATE brushless motor driving the blades at a 4.2-degree oscillation angle when hooked up to the 5 AH REDLITHIUM XC battery. The motor operates at 10,000 RPM to deliver twice as many oscillations per minute, which can be further modulated using its 10-setting speed dial to tackle a variety of materials across applications ranging from cut-off, grouting, and sanding. The tool also incorporates an "autoload" feature that allows you to start cuts slow, while ramping up oscillations automatically as the load increases further into the cut. Quick cuts don't have to come at operator discomfort because Milwaukee claims that its vibration dampening system guarantees reduced fatigue.

The oscillating multi-tool benefits from a tool-less accessory blade changer, which makes it easy to switch from cutting to grinding or from grouting to adhesive removal operations. We recommend picking up a variety blade kit to get the most out of this tool.

Manual caulk guns are cheap, but these require a fair bit of learning curve to squeeze out sealants along a consistent bead. While these inexpensive sealant applicators make sense for small projects like weatherproofing windows, bathroom renovation requires a copious amount of precision sealant application between tiles, the edges of sinks and toilets, and virtually any crevice or gap that needs waterproofing. A cordless motorized caulk gun is no longer a luxury for any bathroom renovation project involving something as basic as tile replacement.

The Milwaukee M18 10oz. Caulk and Adhesive Gun not only saves your wrists from the rigors of squeezing a manual caulk gun, but it also features a handy rotary dial to adjust the max application speed for consistency. Combine that with a variable trigger and rotating collar, and you have all you need to maintain a uniform sealant beading, even around corners. The tool is smart enough to maintain consistent flow rates and uniform beads despite the varying viscosity levels of the glue and sealant tubes fed into it. Milwaukee also touts an anti-drip feature that promises a drip free application the moment you pull your finger off the trigger.

The M18 version features all-metal gears delivering 950 lb of force, whereas the lighter and cheaper Milwaukee M12 caulk and adhesive gun maxes out at 400 lb. The latter also lacks the anti-drip and automatic viscosity adjustment. However, it still makes sense for smaller projects involving single types of sealant applications.

Although a typical bathroom makeover calls for more than five different types of tools, these recommendations are intended to help most DIYers ease their way through the tedious and challenging aspects of bathroom renovation, such as demolition, plumbing, caulking, and accomplishing precision cuts required for tiling and cabinetry.

More often than not, tool recommendations are geared towards professionals working on large sites, whose expectations from their tools are vastly different compared to DIYer working on smaller bathroom renovation projects. That's why our cut-off and drilling tool recommendations are split into two separate categories, with each option either delivering raw power or precision and compactness to tackle a wide spectrum of challenges encountered during a bathroom makeover.

Some of the recommended tools, such as the oscillating multi tool, are included with the intention of helping out inexperienced DIYers as it allows one to make impossible plunge cuts often required to compensate for any planning oversights.