By Diane Daniel 

 

WESTFORD-As Marie Craig guided a ceramic square into the large tile-cutting machine, producing a metallic screech, Mary Satko covered her ears. Her mouth opened wide and her eyes, behind safety goggles, bugged out as if she'd seen a monster. 

Then it was her turn. She ever so tentatively pushed the tile to meet the blade of the whirring wet saw that had been rented and set up next to her kitchen. The slice was smooth and quick. Satko's response was just as immediatete: The 44-year-old wife and mother jumped up and down with excitement.

She had a similar reaction as she placed her first tile onto a kitchen backsplash after Craig had guided her through the process. Craig showed her how to apply adhesive with a trowel ("you want a firm grip; hold it with some oomph"), place the tiles ("twist it a little and really make contact"), and insert spacers to keep channels open for grout ("clean out the adhesive so you'll have room for the grout"), which they planned to spread together the following week.

"I'm very excited about learning this stuff," Satko said later. "It's a wonderful sense of accomplishment."

It's been only a few months since Craig, 42, started her business, Marie's Home Improvement, with the idea of doing and teaching. The motto on her business card reads: "I Can Fix It - You Can Too! "She will come to your home to repair or redo just about anything, and in the process she will teach you how to do it yourself.

With Craig's help, Satko has changed a bathroom fawcet, painted her kitchen ceiling, and painted and decorated her daughter Katie's bedroom - with Katie's help. She also was inspired to tackle some projects solo.

"I was a computer consultant before I had Kate," Satko said.

"Then, when I started staying home, I was just a mom. This has given me something to learn and contribute. It's just been wonderful." Her husband, she said, is thrilled to havethe help.

For years, Craig had been in corporate communications and mediation training. She loved the teaching aspect of her job but wanted to switch to a field she thought she would enjoy more. 

"Home improvement has been so fun for me, and it's so satisfying for me to do these things," she said. "So I had this idea that I could teach women how to do this stuff." She works out of her Westford home, charges $50 an hour, and will either do the work herself or teach while doing, to whatever degree customers request. Except for machines that need to be rented, she brings her tools and equipment in a minivan. 

She is part of a fast-moving trend in which women increasingly are talking about, learning, and doing their own home maintenance. Figures from Home Depot 

and Lowe's Home Improvement chains indicate women now make about half the purchases in those stores. 

Tomboy Tools, founded three years ago by five Colorado women, sells tools and other equipment specially designed for women and hosts in-home workshops 

to show women how to use the tools themselves (www.tomboytools.com). 

Earlier this year, the book. "Dare to Repair-A Do-it-Herself Guide to Fixing (Almost) Anything in the Home" (Harper Collins), by Washington residents Julie Sussman and Stephanie Glakas-Tenet, was published. Sussman's husband works for the Central Intelligence Agency while Glakas-Tenet's husband is George Tenet, director of the CIA. The book provides instruction in all 

sorts of plumbing, electricity, carpentry, and home safety areas. 

Craig earned her handy-woman stripes growing up in Johnson, Vt., watching her parents build, renovate, and repair apartment houses. Her parents now live in Arizona, and her father, who is her one-man, home-repair hot line, visits yearly to assist with major work at her home. 

Thehouse Craigshares with her two young daughters is a testament to her craft. She's painted it inside and out, installed a new toilet, and tiled several floors. With her father's help she built a front porch, a doorway, and they plan to erect a garage. She lets her daughters, 4 and 7, help "any way that I can." Though Craig's ex-husband did some work on the house, she was, and is, the regular handy person. When her boyfriend moves down from Maine in the near future, that won't change. 

Though Craig knows her way around a hardware store, she understands that many women don't, often because they were never exposed to home repair work growing up. She asks customers and students at the home repair classes she teaches through adult education programs "what's stopping them from doing projects. It's usually things like fear, time, and money, but mostly it's fear," she said. "They're scared to drill into the walls or hammer a nail." 

Along with demonstrating such things as how to use a power drill or a hammer, or change fawcets and doorknobs, she encourages women to not be intimidated at hardware stores. 

"I strongly encourage women to speakup," she said. "Don't get hung up on the language. I tell them I don't remember the name of every little thingie."

She also warns them that during any project, "something is always going to go wrong." The key, she said, is learning to fix, or at least hide, your mistakes.

She recommends the Home Depot series of home repair books.

"They're really geared to peopIe who don't have experience" she said. "They have really good pictures and explain all the tools you need."

One of Craig's biggest fans is Ginger Burr, owner of Total Image Consultants in Somerville, who sent out a group e-mail after using Craig's services for all of three hours.

"I just had the most amazing afternoon!" she wrote. "I changed the faucets on my kitchen and bathroom sinks, put up shelving and towel racks, replaced the door knobs, and reattached door pulls that didn't fit right."

Said Burr later, "Marie demystified the whole kitchen plumbing process and doesn't make you feel like an idiot. That very same day, I went out and bought a plumber's wrench. Before, I had no idea there even was such a thing."

Personal file: Marie Craig 

Born: Dec. 10,1959, Albuquerque, N.M. 

Favorite toy growing up: "Barbie dolls." 

Childhood ambition:"To be a mom."

Favorite tool: "My battery-powered screwdriver." 

Toughest job a do-it-yourselfer should tackle: "Laying tile." 

A skill you need to work on: "Estimating the time it takes to do jobs I've never done."

A renovation tip: "If you have a worn-out hole you want to put a screw into, put a broken toothpick or matchstick in first." 

The coolest thing you've built from scratch: "I put a new roof on my shed." Julia Child or Martha Stewart, pick one: "Julia Child."

Why? "Her longevity." 

A question you haven't been asked 

but should have been: "Why do I like 

doing this?" 

OK, why? Because Ilove to see practical, tangible, physical results that last." The one thing you wish everyone would just get right: In painting, prepping is 90 percent of the job."