Economy turns more homeowners into DIYers

On a freezing Saturday morning, with snow flurries in the forecast, a handful of people braved the weather to watch Stephanie Kirchner give a clinic on tiling at the Home Depot in Cockeysville, Md.

At a small demonstration area in the middle of the store, surrounded by buckets and wet saws and mixing compounds, Kirchner ticked off the pros and cons of three types of tile: ceramic, porcelain and natural stone.

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BITA HONARVAR/bhonarvar@ajc.com

Atlanta-based Home Depot, the country’s largest home-improvement retailer, offers free clinics on a variety of subjects, including energy efficiency in the home.

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME
Katie and Gene Hamilton, who write a do-it-yourself syndicated column and have written a number of books on DIY projects, offer these insights:
Mistakes
• Scheduling a big project before a holiday or family event
• Tackling too large a project
• Neglecting to prepare family members for the inconvenience (no electricity means no hair dryer)
• Not budgeting enough money to eat out.
• Losing their sense of humor.
Leave it to the professionals
• Install drywall
• Install roofing on a two-story house
• Sand floors
• Take on plumbing projects that require a building permit

RESOURCES
• Home Depot clinics: www.homedepotclinics.com
• Lowe's How-To guides: www.lowes.com
• The Hamiltons' site: diyornot.com

While natural stone, the priciest of the three, is the Taj Mahal of the tile world, even that has a few negatives, she said.

“It’s very beautiful but more difficult to install,” Kirchner said. “It needs lots of treatments. Also it’s difficult to clean.”

Looking on with rapt attention was Mary Sturm of Upperco, who had just bought a condo in Bethany Beach, Del., and was interested in fixing up its two bathrooms.

“In order to afford the condo and do the (repair) work, too, I have to do some of the work myself,” said Sturm.

With more consumers feeling the effects of the economic downturn, the popularity of clinics and classes in home repair and home maintenance seems to be on the rise.

“What (we’re) getting is a lot more of the do-it-yourselfers,” said Corrie Grammer, specialty manager at the Home Depot.

He recalled a conversation a few days earlier with a couple who planned to install laminate in a powder room in their home.

“They said: ‘If times were better, we’d have somebody else do it,’” Grammer said.

Instead, he continued, “they bought all the products they needed from start to finish” and headed off to plunge into their project.

Atlanta-based Home Depot, the country’s largest home-improvement retailer, offers free clinics on a variety of subjects: energy efficiency in the home, tiling floors and walls, closet organization and hanging drywall one month; painting, tiling, small-bath updates and installing interior lighting in another.

And while corporate spokeswoman Jennifer King said, “We don’t track attendance of regular clinics,” she added, “I definitely think we see an increase in people doing projects themselves or inquiring about projects they can do.”

King said Home Depot’s “do-it-herself workshops,” started in 2003 for women do-it-yourselfers, have also been popular.

“We wanted to give women an environment where they could feel comfortable asking questions … and learning with other women,” she said. “It’s been really successful.”

Lowe’s, Home Depot’s chief big-box rival, does not offer in-store clinics. Instead it has an extensive online library of home-improvement topics for customers to tap into.

“Our customers have said they prefer having information online so they can have it easily available as they plan their own DIY projects or do research for projects they plan to hire (for),” spokeswoman Karen Cobb said in an e-mail.

But despite the economic meltdown of the past few months, Cobb said Lowe’s hasn’t seen a dramatic shift in the types of projects people are undertaking.

“Our research shows that, with the exception of bigger-ticket projects such as kitchen remodels, consumers are interested in the same types of home projects they’ve been tackling for many years,” she said.

Gardening and landscaping, interior painting, replacing lighting fixtures, replacing plumbing fixtures and front-entrance enhancements are the top projects of interest to Lowe’s customers, Cobb said.

As for the reasons for taking on such projects, Lowe’s research shows that 92 percent of its customers say they’re interested in replacing old or worn-out materials, 44 percent want to clean up or freshen the look of their homes and 41 percent plan to decorate or redecorate.