Novices who start a home repair or remodeling project often get stuck and seek out help from a friend, or end up hiring a professional-exactly what they had sought to avoid.
Vince Olivo has had many do-it-yourselfers come to him for help. For example, there was the man who tore out the basement stairway and then not only heard the upstairs floor creaking loudly but realized he didn’t know how to build a new stairway.
“A lot of people start something and then come and take my home repair or basic carpentry course at Daley College,” says Olivo, who teaches everything from wallpaper hanging and floor and wall tile installation to remodeling skills and how to maintain garbage disposal units and heating and air conditioning systems.
50 courses
He is one of the instructors at 13 area community colleges that offer 50 home maintenance and home improvement courses. Curriculums include basic and fundamental home repairs, rehabbing and remodeling, heating and air conditioning maintenance and small engine repair as well as more specific subject matter.
Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, for example, has separate courses on kitchen remodeling, bathroom remodeling and window replacement. Triton College in River Grove even has a course on how to build a deck. The lineup at Harper College in Palatine includes “The Magic of Paint” as well as home rehab and remodeling, interior design and home landscaping. While some courses are hands-on, others are straight lectures, although instructors say they will always offer personal advice on an individual basis, even by telephone.
Costs range from $10 to as much as $86 for courses that may require the purchase of some supplies, tools and textbooks. Most courses are open to out-of-district students for little or no additional charge.
For the small engine repair course at Daley College, students bring in lawn mowers, edgers and other power equipment they are having problems with and instructor George Drennen, who has worked on truck and other engines and mobile refrigeration and heating units for several large companies, tells them what parts they need and how to replace them. He also teaches how these small engines operate and how they should be maintained.
At the College of Du Page in Glen Ellyn, Robert Jensen, who retired 11 years ago as a manager for the Bell system, teaches an 18-hour, 6-week basic home repair course and a 6-hour, 2-week phone installation and repair course. Enrollment is limited to 15, to maximize personalized instruction.
“I bring in three demonstration walls for the home repair course-one on electrical, one on plumbing and one on drywalling,” he says. With these he shows how to install extra electrical outlets, replace lamp sockets, repair and replace faucets, install shutoffs under faucets so that faucets can be repaired or replaced without shutting off water for the entire house, repair toilets, maintain hot water heaters, and install drywall without nail heads showing.
Armed with knowledge
About one-third of Jensen’s students are new homeowners. The remainder have reached the point where their homes are beginning to need major repairs, he says. Since he began teaching basic home repair four years ago, there have almost always been more women students than men. Some attend with their husbands, he notes, while others attend on their own.
Some students take the course to prepare for future needs, or to better understand what contractors and other tradespeople they hire are doing “so they won’t be taken,” Jensen says.
That is one reason many of his students take the blueprint-reading course he teaches, says Olivo. “They want to be able to follow and better understand what is being done.” Also, when armed with blueprints for their homes, they can better know what has to be done when they intend to undertake major work themselves.
Jensen recalls a phone call from a woman who had taken his course: “She said that the wall in her shower had caved in just as I had warned because of water soaking into and weakening the grout around the tile. She rebuilt the wall with new tile, and then replaced the tile on the other walls to match.
Then she kept on going. She replaced the old toilet and sink, put ceramic tile on the floor and put a fan in the ceiling that she ducted to the outside. After she showed her work to her mother, she ended up doing her mother’s bathroom, too.”
To do even an involved remodeling job, “all you need to know is the basics for any trade, but especially for carpentry, and have a little common sense,” says Olivo, a former union carpenter and contractor.
As proof of that, he points to the accomplishments of some of his other students after taking only one of his courses. One student went on to build a garage, another built a garage and an addition, and two brothers built an entire house.
“I inspected their home before it was finished,” Olivo says, “and they had done a real nice job on it.”
Put to the test
Nance Dulaj, an administrative assistant with the Chicago Department of Health, says she took all of Olivo’s courses-home repair and basic carpentry I and II-after “I realized the house needed a lot of repairs that I had let go. I couldn’t afford to hire contractors.”
Assisted by her two sons and some of their friends, and with frequent telephone advice from Olivo, she rebuilt the back porch, designed and built a new deck, remodeled a bathroom and installed sliding doors.
“I was glad I signed up for the courses before starting the work because we didn’t make any mistakes,” says the Southwest Side resident. “And we saved so much money I couldn’t believe it.”
Beverly Leonard, a nurse at the West Side Veterans Hospital, says she took courses because of the work that needs to be done, including building a new porch or deck on the South Side home she and her husband have lived in for 20 years.
“I don’t want to stick him with everything,” she says. “Even if we work with a construction company, I’ll have some idea what people are talking about.”
Lap Wong, another one of Olivo’s former students, who works as a waiter at an Elmwood Park restaurant, says he had tried to fix a leaking roof on his two-flat on the Near Southwest Side.
“I tried pasting it down but it kept leaking. Then I took the course and learned that I had to replace some of the roofing material, and learned how to do it,” he says.
Tiles also were falling off the walls in the bathroom, Wong says. “I knew how to do some of the job, but I didn’t know enough to finish the job.” Again, with the help of classroom and personal instruction from Olivo, he put in new tile and did other improvements.
“Our daughters, who are 7 and 5, are very happy,” says Wong. “They have a new bathroom.”
While many former students are satisfied with being able to maintain and improve their homes, Wong wants to go even further. “I intend to change my job. I want to be a professional in construction,” he says.
