By Marci Laehr Tenuta
Journal Times | Posted: Thursday, January 24, 2008 12:00 am
Felicia King is a firm believer that all women should know how to fix their own stuff.
"I grew up very poor," said the 33-year-old from Somers. "My dad was not around. My mom worked 60 to 80 hours a week. When the lawn mower busted, my mother gave me her tool box and her Briggs and Stratton book, and said, 'Figure it out.' "
She did. And King continued to figure out how to fix things around the house and garage. She spent hours at the library reading up on how to do-it-herself.
"That's how I learned to do things," King said.
She was only 10 when she fixed the lawn mower. Last year she spent four months building her mother a new steel garage.
The home improvement women's movement
King isn't alone. Take a trip to the local home improvement store. Walk around and take a good look at the other customers.
Unlike 10 years ago, chances are today you would be looking into the faces of just as many women shoppers as men. Women have become just as interested in home improvement as their husbands and brothers. And they're tackling just as many projects.
Abby Buford, a spokeswoman for Lowe's home improvement stores, said the Home Improvement Research Institute, where Lowe's is a member, said the female head of household project-doers increased 4 percent from 1999 to 2005.
Other home improvement stores are seeing more female customers, too. "Half of our customers are women," said Jennifer King, a spokeswoman for Home Depot. "Over the last five or so years we've definitely seen an uptick in the number of women."
So much so that in May of 2003 the company launched Do-It-Herself workshops on Monday nights. The free clinics allowed women to come into the stores, learn how to use products and power tools, and complete projects on their own.
"The interest levels range from 'I want to hang a picture' to 'I want to install my cabinetry,' " Jennifer King said.
In the past four years about 370,000 women have attended Home Depots Do-It-Herself clinics. Some stores have very active groups of ladies who get together regularly to talk about their current projects, share stories and pictures, and discuss what else they want to learn.
"It's great to see," she said. "A lot of our customers have really advanced."
A way to save money
Felicia King said she thinks that more women are becoming DIY savvy, at least in part, because they are tired of paying someone else to do it. She owns a computer consulting company, but has often been asked to be a construction consultant by clients.
"They feel like they are being taken advantage of because they don't know enough to make sure they're not getting ripped off," she said. "I consistently hear that from educated, professional women."
It's also what drove King to build her mom's garage.
After receiving a quote from a carpenter for $5,000 to fix her falling down garage, King's mother, Karen King, turned to her for help.
King found out that she could buy a new steel building for less than what the carpenter wanted to fix the 1875 garage.
Together, with family, she tore down her mother's old garage. They poured a new concrete slab and spent from August to December constructing the building.
"I enjoyed doing it," King said.
And in the end, she helped save her mother quite a bit of money. The entire project with the new concrete slab and the garage cost about $10,000. King said a contractor would probably have charged around $25,000 to $30,000 for the job.
A sense of pride
Many people have turned do-it-yourself when it comes to small fixes or improvements in their home as a way to save cash, but mostly women do it for a sense of accomplishment.
Jennifer King said Home Depot did surveys a few years ago and asked questions of their women customers. "A lot of what we were seeing was it was about empowerment," she said. "Women said they wanted to learn new things and do things themselves. It gave them a sense of accomplishment. They felt really good doing something from start to finish on their own."
Buford said the enormous amount of how-to information that is now available on TV, in books and magazines and on the Internet gives willing women as chance to learn. They are also making their own money and buying homes as singles, which makes taking up the challenge of home improvement even more satisfying, she said.
Although she started out of necessity, Felicia King said construction and home improvement projects can grow into a hobby when women get more experience and gain confidence. She thinks all women should learn basic home improvement stuff for their own sake. She also likes the idea of then sharing what they've learned with others.
King, who already knew a lot about electrical work, plumbing and construction, said she learned so much more while building her mom's garage. She decided it was worth documenting for others.
At her Web site http://www.prakin.com/Portals/0/Projects/SteelGarage/ King takes visitors step-by-step through the garage building, noting surprises and tips she picked up along the way.
"I'd never built a garage before," she said. "It was a unique challenge. I thought I would share the techniques I learned, my thought process and the challenges that came up."
Beyond the basics
In addition to doing their own home improvement projects, women are branching out into charity construction work and teaching skills to other women. Women Build is a Habitat for Humanity International program that trains women to make a difference by building homes and communities, Buford said.
Lowe's is the underwriter of the Women Build program. Each year, Lowe's awards grants to selected affiliates through an application process with Women Build.
The company also offers free how-to clinics to Women Build affiliates that teach volunteers construction basics while providing extensive hands-on opportunities.
As an active participant in a variety of Habitat projects from coast to coast, hundreds of Lowe's volunteers help Habitat homeowners build their dreams each year.
The program was started in 1991 by a group of women in Charlotte, N.C. According to the Habitat for Humanity Web site, to date, more than 1,200 official Women Builds have been completed since 1998, and the program is growing across international borders to empower women everywhere to address the problem of poverty housing for themselves, their families and their neighbors.