What do you do when your home has a hole in the wall that needs patching up or a light fixture that needs to be swapped out? Do you take out your tool kit and step ladder and put in some elbow grease? Or do you take out your smartphone and call up a handyman? If you lean toward the latter, you’re not alone. There’s a small wave of new workshops emerging across the U.S. specifically for women and femmes who are looking to gain the know-how to tackle these home repair projects themselves.
In her latest piece for Dwell, contributor Anjulie Rao stopped in at Tool School, a workshop series held at the Chicago women’s sports bar Babe’s. Students were hoping to learn the skills to hang art and mount shelves in their homes and their teacher Juliana Masci, who works in construction, has more than enough wisdom to impart. What Rao noticed was that Masci’s pupils weren’t just picking up knowledge that would save them money—they were gaining confidence, too. Removed from the typically male-dominated spaces of home improvement, they could try and fail without feeling harshly judged for it. “I don’t think I could be vulnerable in another environment,” Tool School student Taylor Frazier-Thompson told Rao. After Tool School, students can be proud of the fact that they did their handiwork themselves. The fact that they don’t need to let TaskRabbit drain their bank account anymore is just an added bonus.
—River Davies, Market Editor
