Another male bastion has fallen. Those one-time all-boy preserves, the nation`s lumberyards, hardware stores and do-it-yourself centers, are now attracting increasing numbers of a brave new breed: female rehabbers.
Surveys done by Builders Square, a national chain of home centers, show that women now make up 28 percent of the stores` customer base, up from 11 percent just a few years ago.
”On weekdays, we found a lot of married women in the stores, making purchases for themselves and their husbands; on weekends, it was single women- many of them single parents-doing projects in their own homes or condos,”
says Mike Gallenberger, regional manager for the chain. ”They want good merchandise; they want to be told how to use it; and they don`t want to be demeaned when they`re told.”
In complete agreement is competitor Steven Kadish, president of Chicago-based Handy Andy, which has stores in five Midwestern states. ”There`s no question about it. We`re seeing lots more women, both do-it-yourselfers and buy-it-yourselfers-those who pick out the merchandise they want and then hire someone else to install it,” he says. ”We saw the trend coming. In fact, we feel we helped lead the shift. We`re finding that women are far more involved in the rehabbing, remodeling and repair of their homes than they were 10 years ago.”
A change of focus
One such example is Frances Temchin of Chicago, who has renovated two single-family houses and two apartment buildings, and is currently rehabbing an eight-unit structure in Bucktown.
Originally from New York, Temchin quit a career in labor relations and counseling to get her architectural degree; she then worked for several prestigious firms, including Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. With an urge to
”return part of the city to the middle class,” and unable to find anyone to rehab the first house she bought for herself, she quit her job and plunged into the work herself. She had no experience, except in painting, but she was mechanically talented.
”I make the architectural plans, and I do whatever the city permits,”
explains Temchin. ”I act as general contractor; I do the selection and purchase of materials; I paint, and tape for drywall. I do the ceramic tile and vinyl tile work. I strip woodwork. And I do the hardware-installing the locks and doorknobs. There`s a lot of hardware that goes into these projects. But I hire out the electrical, plumbing and carpentry work; I have no training in those fields, and no time to learn them.”
Carolyn Circo of Oak Park came to rehabbing in a more roundabout way, and she has worked only on her own home, which sometimes seems to be a lifetime project.
”Our basement was gray, peeling and horribly ugly, so we decided to put a wall across it to separate the laundry room,” she says. ”My husband and I rented tools-you can even rent a gun that shoots nails!-and put the wall up. That was easy, so we enclosed the furnace area.
”Then I decided it would be nice to have a stucco effect on some of the new walls, so I sponged joint compound on the drywall.
”I just recently discovered press-and-stick tiles, and I tiled the laundry room floor-boy, is that fun! It makes such a change, and it brightens things up.
”These projects seem so small, and so easy, but they do grow, and they do get expensive. My husband cringes when he sees that look in my eye.”
Learning by doing
In the past, most women didn`t learn about building techniques from their fathers. How do they learn to do these things?
”I turn to books,” says Lori Burr, a rehabber who decided to stay in Chicago and go into the renovation business when her company moved to Kansas City 1 1/2 years ago. Although she did get some pointers from her father, she now relies on a Time-Life series of books and an illustrated Reader`s Digest guide to home repairs that she calls ”the bible.”
Her repertoire includes everything from wallpapering to roofing. ”You learn what you enjoy doing, and what`s worth paying someone else to do,” she says. Burr, whose firm is called North Shore Partners, loathes drywall sanding, which she calls ”a horrible job,” and avoids sanding floors.
”You learn from your mistakes very quickly, because there`s a major financial impact each time you screw up,” Temchin says. ”I pick a lot of things up by watching people do things, and I always experiment on small projects.” For instance, she recalls sitting on a bathroom floor at 11 p.m. with a pair of ”tile guys,” cutting and placing tiny pieces of ceramic tile. Shopping around
Some women who might like to try rehabbing-either for the sheer exhilaration of making physical changes that look good and improve their quality of life, or for the more pragmatic desire to save the cost of hiring a professional-have been put off by the attitudes of some clerks in hardware stores.
However, Circo believes things have improved considerably in the 22 years she`s been rehabbing. ”I`ve seen a real change in attitude,” she says.
”I`ll go in with an idea of what I need, but I don`t know the proper terminology. It used to be that if you didn`t know exactly what you were looking for, forget it. But now the salesmen are more pleasant, and they`ll look through their books and boxes to find what you need. Maybe they laugh behind our backs-but they show us more respect to our faces.”
Chains such as Handy Andy and Builders Square are well aware of the need to cater to women, whom they consider a growing market.
”We`re trying to provide an environment where the shopping experience is not unpleasant,” says Handy Andy`s Kadish. ”Not like the old, dirty, spit-on-the-floor lumberyard, and not like the small, closed-in hardware store. We`re making our stores bright and inviting, and full of ideas-room setups and vignettes in the bathroom department-to show how things go together. We try to keep our stores very clean. We want to create a merchandising experience, where people want to come and want to browse.”
Room for improvement
Builders Square has made a host of material improvements with an eye toward luring more women to its stores, says Gallenberger. It has made the stores more accessible and easy to shop; upgraded merchandise with wider and more stylish selections; and, most of all, improved service-changes that should benefit all their customers.
”We`ve got lots of women contractors coming in now, and they`re more picky than the male shopper,” says Gallenberger. ”They`re more demanding. They want more efficiency, and more detail.”
Most of all, the stores say, they want to make life easier for their customers who have found satisfaction in rehabbing.
Says Temchin, who admits to shopping at the chains, mostly for their prices: ”I`ve worked for 23 years, and I find this the most rewarding thing I`ve done. Once you start doing the work, there`s a vitality to it that I enjoy. It`s certainly more satisfying than working behind a desk.”
