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That $90 laser level I almost skipped ended up paying for itself twice over
I bought a rotary laser level back in March for 90 bucks from a pawn shop, figured it was a gamble. First job was a garden wall in Dayton, and it kept the courses dead straight over 40 feet, saved me from pulling string lines every morning. Then a walkway where the ground sloped bad, I set the grade in about 20 minutes instead of fiddling with a water level for half the day. Anyone else find that spending a bit more on a decent level beats redoing a fall on a patient homeowner?
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nguyen.morgan1mo ago
That 40 foot run is exactly where it gets interesting though. I helped a buddy lay paver edging last summer and we spent an entire afternoon redoing a section because the line sagged in the heat. The sun does weird things to string, it stretches and droops and suddenly your "straight" line has a belly in it. Nobody talks about the time cost of setting up and checking stakes every few feet either. I timed myself once, it takes about 15 minutes just to get a string line dead level on a slope, and that's before you even start digging. So yeah, the pawn shop deal was lucky, but the real win is not having to babysit your layout every hour.
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hannah3201mo ago
Whoa, hold on there. I get that it worked out for you, but I still think a good old fashioned string line and a smart level do the job for a tenth of the cost. That pawn shop deal sounds like a lucky one-off, not something I'd count on.
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