More women, couples tackling home repairs
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer
When Nalani McLaughlin sees a great home improvement idea on TV, she heads straight to Home Depot.
Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser
Even if it's 3 a.m.
Nalani McLaughlin, businesswoman and frequent Home Depot shopper, says being able to make her own home repairs is "cool" and empowering.
"If I get excited enough, I just rush right out," she says. "They're open all the time, and it's a great atmosphere, even in the middle of the night."
McLaughlin, 29, single and the owner of her own business, is among of the new breed of do-it-yourself shopper. She's not only comfortable inside a hardware store, she actually enjoys being there.
"I love it here," she said, taking a break at the Iwilei Home Depot store the other day while buying a new sink for one of her bakeries, which produce the Auntie Nalani's Cookies marketed around town under several labels. "There's something very cool about being able to make your own repairs, to feel empowered with a tool in your hand. They've changed the whole climate of hardware stores."
Once the exclusive domain of men, big home improvement stores like Lowe's, Home Depot, City Mill and smaller outlets like Ace Hardware and Hardware Hawai'i have changed their look and marketing to bring more couples and women into the fold.
They've added better lighting, design-consulting stations, aisles of tile, paint, fixture and lighting choices, as well as huge nursery and landscaping departments.
And they've hired more employees, including more women, to answer fix-it questions.
"They take a lot of fear out of the process," McLaughlin said. "Now I can get the satisfaction of changing my own sink or toilet, and not have to pay somebody to do it. That's kind of cool and very gratifying."
Other women are discovering the same feeling. Consider the numbers:
• Women make up at least half the shoppers in home improvement stores and accounted for nearly 38 percent of do-it-yourself purchases in 2000, according to the American Hardware Manufacturers Association. Lowe's said women account for 50 percent of purchases at its stores. Ace Hardware research shows women spend approximately 45 percent more per visit than men.
• A survey by the Home Improvement Research Institute in Florida shows women getting involved in do-it-yourself projects at a faster rate then men; meanwhile, the number of do-it-yourself products purchased by men has declined over the last two years. Home Depot says the number of women taking its fix-it and remodeling workshops has tripled since 1996.
• With the number of single women home buyers and the number of women in the construction industry both doubling over the last decade, power tool manufacturers have produced new lines with softer handles, lighter battery packs, even designer colors.
• All of that has helped fuel a boom in the home improvement business. Home improvement industry sales have jumped $10 billion every year since 1997, topping out at nearly $169 billion in 2000.
It's not just the business that's changed; the stores may also have shifted the whole landscape between men and women shoppers. No longer are women from Nordstrom and men from Home Depot, as one Web site puts it. Now we're all in it together.
Together in the tool aisle
Go to any of the big box outlets in Hawai'i on a Friday evening or Saturday morning and you'll see more young people, women, couples and families talking, sometimes arguing, about which lumber, tile, tools or plants to use for a weekend project.
Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser
"We always shop for the home together," said Loretta Campbell, who along with her husband, Jack, was at City Mill last week planning some renovation work on their Waikiki condo.
Newlyweds Maho and Mark Flathau cruise through the hardware aisle at Home Depot in search of items for his Waikiki surf shop.
The two tend to shop alone when looking for clothes or other things, "but when it comes to something for the home, which you will have to live with for 20 years, you better be sure you're both happy," said Loretta, who has been married to Jack for 47 years.
Mark and Maho Flathau have only been married a year, but they, too, enjoy browsing the hardware aisles together.
"Sometimes we just come out and cruise," said Mark, who was at Home Depot to pick out some hardware for his Waikiki surf shop, while Maho looked on. "It's part of the planning. We get ideas, and usually we agree on the things we like. We'll probably spend even more time here when we get a home someday."
All that togetherness apparently is leading to more design discussions in American households. A national Harris Interactive /Yankelovich Partners survey last month found that 71 percent of Americans disagree with their significant others about something when it comes to home decorating.
And it's the men getting involved in the design choices who are making the waves. "The 'yes dear, whatever you want attitude' is definitely on the decline," said Nancy Dietzman, a kitchen designer in Chicago.
The survey found the top three areas of disagreement are color (31 percent), style (25 percent) and quality (15 percent).
Clearly, not all men and women are ready to trust each other when it comes to home shopping.
"The wahine go for all the pretty stuff, so sometimes they go buy a fancy thing when a simple one would do," said Albert Rowland, a retired electrician buying a toilet flapper at City Mill last week while his wife waited outside in an air-conditioned van.
"Mostly I go shopping by myself, and my wife just says make sure you get what you need," he said. Rowland added that he'll often shop at the big home improvement stores for quick fixes, like the leaking toilet, but heads back to the plumbing and electrical speciality shops of his working days when he's considering serious improvements to his home.
A woman's touch
At a nearby store, Char Marker was checking out design choices in the tile section while her husband, Max, was at work.
"He can't be trusted with things like tiles and colors," she said. "I don't leave those kinds of things up to him; I'm the one that picks the color." Max, however, will get to decide what kind of grout to use in the tiling project. "Not the color, just the right kind of grout," she added.
Marker prefers the bright, comfortable atmosphere of Home Depot to the old hardware and lumber stores. "There are all kinds of people here, lots of friendly help. It's a place where you can bring the kids, feed them a hot dog and spend a lot of time."
The stores still have a certain allure for men, too.
"I can spend hours inside here and not buy a ... thing," said Chaney Carnes, who stopped into Home Depot one afternoon to pick up a piece of sand paper. His wife, Stacy, usually avoids the store altogether, "unless she's in the market for something specific."
There are other places, too, where men can be men and spend hours transfixed in a tool aisle or searching for just the right-sized bolt.
"I love tools; they're fantastic; they say something important about man's ability to create," said Jack Armstrong, who had a rapturous look on his face as he examined a row of hand planners at the Woodcraft store in Kalihi. "I fell into woodworking in my later years, but I've got a great big collection of tools now."
Armstrong and his wife, Sherrie Moore, built a home together on the Big Island five years ago. During 10 years of planning, there was plenty of discussion and disagreement over just about everything from sinks to nuts as they made their way together from one Hilo specialty shop to another.
"I won on some things, and she won on some others," Armstrong said.
These days, Armstrong indulges his hobby with trips to the Woodcraft store whenever he's in Honolulu. Even though his wife supports his passion, she rarely accompanies him.
"She'd much rather spend her time in a bookstore," Armstrong said.
At Hawaii Nut and Bolt Inc. in Mapunapuna, women shoppers are rare. This is a place where nearly every customer wears well-worn blue jeans and construction boots; almost every vehicle in the parking lot is a pickup truck — or larger — with a tool box in the back. For more than 20 years the store has been the place to go for that really hard-to-find piece of hardware.
Greg Hainline, regional vice president for Mandara Spa, was there looking for burnished bronze screws needed to install some hardware at the company's new Hilton Hawaiian Village outlet.
"It's hard to visualize the old hardware and lumber stores now. The big stores have done a good job of allowing women and even a lot more men to get involved in home improvement," he said. "They're real comfortable and the staff is real helpful there, but when you need something very specific, you can't beat coming to a place like this. Lowe's or City Mill will have steel and brass screws, but they don't have bronze."
Meanwhile, Chris Green, a contractor from Connecticut was waiting while a Nut and Bolt worker hunted up a particular nylon lock he needed for his work on a submarine repair at Pearl Harbor.
"I never go shopping with my wife," Green said. "She doesn't have a clue. She just picks the color and I do everything else."
• On the web: bandersnatch.com/womenare.htm
