KEN IGE / KIGE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Girl Power Crazy! Jennifer Costa, instructor of the Do-It-Herself workshops held recently at Home Depot, is armed with some serious power. At left is a Paslode Impulse framing nailer. At right is her trusty 18-volt Milwaukee cordless driver/hammer drill.
Today's women don't want
to wait for men to fix things, they're
learning to do the work themselves
Women who are tired of playing the waiting game and want to feel empowered shouldn't have depend on a man for happiness on the homefront. They can pick up a rotary drill or circular saw and grind away themselves.
Whether installing curtain rods or sanding the kitchen cupboards, women today are less inclined to wait for a man to play fixer-upper.
To meet the needs of a burgeoning female customer base, Home Depot held hour-long clinics on the use of power tools, laying brick, and installing landscape lighting at its two Hawaii locations as part of a national "Do-It-Herself" campaign last week. More clinics are being planned for the future.
A Census Bureau statistic reveals that 57 percent of single women own their own homes, according to Home Depot's publicity director, Brigid Ho. Home Depot has been promoting "female empowerment" and getting women comfortable with tools and improvement projects at its mainland stores for the past couple of years, Ho said. This was the first "Do-It-Herself" series offered in Hawaii.
Leihulu Greene, supervisor of the store's tool department and a former construction crew foreman, said most of the weekly how-to workshops are attended by couples interested in saving money by doing some of the work they once hired contractors to do.
Most of the 20-some women at the power tools workshop, ranging in age from their early 20s to 87, never touched a power drill in their lives and or heard of things like saber saws or rotary tools. Most were familiar with the phenomenon of waiting on husbands/brothers/relatives/repairmen (the latter who habitually arrive hours later than promised) to fix something.
Amidst the sawdust swirling in the air, the women craned their necks to see everything; they didn't want to miss a thing.
Yet when it came time for the women to put those tools to work, one by one, they were hesitant. One zigged when she should have zagged. Another lost control of a power saw, and that was obvious from the unusual buzz it emitted. One drilled too close to the edge of a piece of wood, sending the drill bit glancing off into space.
It definitely wasn't as simple as instructor Jennifer Costa made it look during the demonstration, but the women were up to the challenge.
Anita Wong of Alewa Heights was the first to step up to try the circular saw. When her small piece of wood hit the floor, a cheer went up. Protected with goggles and earmuffs, she smiled broadly.
"That was an experience -- fun though!"
At one point, she had "a handyman come every weekend for several years," because there were so many repairs to be done.
"Since I live by myself, I'm responsible for the house and trying to maintain it," she said. "I spent a lot of money on repairs. But I want to do the minor things myself. I watch the home channel and it looks so easy. I thought maybe I can try and do it."
Audrey Akana of Nuuanu was at the workshop because "I just wanted to see" what the tools are used for, "even though they are intimidating." After trying them herself, she decided the tools weren't so "scary" after all.
"It's not as bad when you drill into soft wood," Akana said.
Akiu Chock, in her mid-80s, and her two daughters, were looking at kitchen fixtures when a salesperson encouraged them to attend the power tools clinic.
Chock's husband did all the home repairs in the past, and the women still keep his tools in their garage, but after he passed away "we had to depend on other men," Chock said.
"I do anything, I even trim trees. I like to do things around the house, but I never tried power tools," she said.
Her daughter, Jamie Chock, said the clinic was "very informative and they make it as simple as possible."
They are hiring carpenters to help them renovate their kitchen, and want to know enough to determine the carpenters are doing the best job possible, Chock added. She was eager to get the feel of a small rotary tool to sand down the rough edges of a piece of wood.
"It's just like a dentist drill," she observed.
Greene, who once taught carpentry apprentices the basics, urged women attending the clinics to keep an open mind and that power tools are nothing to fear.
She recommends buying the least expensive, simplest version of a tool, read the instructions thoroughly and "fiddle with it" to see how it reacts to different kinds of wood.
"You can't just try it once, let it scare you, and put it away," she said. "I used to force myself to learn something I really wanted to learn about. I did a lot of reading about the tool and the kind of projects it can do. It will start to make a little more sense each time. Every button, lever or switch is there for a purpose.
"It's very good that a lot of women now realize that tools weren't designed for just men."
Click for online
calendars and events.
