Staff Writer 

Marie Leonard uses a hammer to pound self-esteem into women. 

The 49-year-old handywoman teaches her female customers how to tile a bathroom, fix a faucet, repair a lamp or install a railing. 

"I tell women that it feels really good to do your own work. It's fun to stand in a shower that you've tiled. It's fun to be in a room that you painted or close a door that you fixed. It's empowering," she said.

Leonard was a financial analyst at Digital Equipment Co. before moving into human resources where she became a trainer. She left Digital and took graduate courses in social work. She then taught workshops in conflict management and negotiations. She left the corporate world shortly after 9/11 in 2001. 

She said she had grown tired of the corporate scene and disliked having to sell herself and make cold calls. One day she decided that what she really wanted to do was teach women how to do home improvement projects and she founded Marie's Home Improvement.

"I had been working on my own house for 12 years. I loved the physical results from completing a project and making things happen. I already had a lot of tools so I didn't have to make a big financial investment," she said.

People hire her at $60 an hour to do the work for them or teach the person how to do the project.

"I provide all the tools and what I call the competence. I come in and I say 'I know how to do this. If you run into trouble, I'll help us figure it out,'" she said. 

She said she not only demonstrates how to use the tools but also talks about the things that can go wrong.

"Women tend to think it is all their fault. They have an automatic response of: "This has only gone wrong because I screwed up." Men think the tool made a mistake," she said.

She said it is important also to know when to stop and admmit that "you've given it your best shot but you need a professional to finish the job."

"My lowest self-esteem days were plumbing days. Because, even if you do everything right, something goes wrong. I fixed a faucet once, replaced the whole faucet, and then when I went to turn the shut-off valve back on, the shut-off valve broke. It hadn't been moved in 14 years," she said.

She said she used to think that this never happened to professional plumbers until she watched a plumber have to saw around an entire lavatory sink and saw off the pipes to get the sink out. 

"It took him two hours, I said to him: "I am so glad to see you struggle like this because I had this fantasy that plumbers can always do this easily.' " 

"What I've noticed is that they know when to bring out the Sawzall, when to stop wrestling with it, when to cut the bolts. They don't spend the time we do trying to loosen something or work on something in an awkward position." 

"My goal is to have women not be dependent and to have a choice as to whether they want to work on their house or not," she said. 

Leonard has two daughters, ages 10 and 15,and is married to a lawyer who is not handy. She does most ofthe work on her own house on Old Lowell Road. 

"We don't communicate well. We speak in different languages. I've talked to a lot of couples who try to do projects together and it's difficult. It's hard for me to understand because I grew up with a father who could do everything. He still builds houses for Habitat for Humanity out in Phoenix in retirement at age 78. I still feel that men should be able to do it. But women and men of today often don't grow up with those expectations," she said. 

Some ofthe practical advice she advises women to consider is to buy tools that are smaller and sized for women. 

"Power tools are very heavy and take a lot of upper body strength to move. I tell women to look for 9-volt battery-operated screwdrivers instead ofthe heavier 18-volt ones, for example." 

Leonard has landed a book contract with Seal Press and is writing a how-to book for women, which is scheduled to be published in November2009. 

"In the book, I am telling women not only how to do it, but what to do when things go wrong—and they almost always do. I hope to offer them solutions that will lead to empowerment."