This HIP Chick's mission: Teaching women to drill, tile, dry wall, and become tool-efficient

At 73, Doris Anthony readily admits she's no expert with a toolbox.

But she'd like to be, maybe even has to be. At nearly 90, her husband isn't as handy as he once was.

He "can't do a lot of it anymore. He's up there in age — and I need to learn how," said Anthony, a retired school aide from Levittown.

So on Wednesday, Anthony walked into the cavernous classroom at Bucks County Community College, toting a drill.

She was one of 17 women, ranging in age from their 30s to 70s, some single, some married, who came out to learn how to drill, tile, repair drywall, hang pictures, and fix their own sinks and toilets.

Teaching the five-week course, called "Home Improvement and Empowerment for Women," is Beth Allen, a 46-year-old Horsham woman who calls her business HIP Chicks.

"Since 90 percent of women will live alone at some point in their lives," Allen says, "this course will help you learn how to live independently and not rely on a handyman."

Census data show the number of adults living alone has steadily climbed over the last century. About half of all marriages end in divorce. And women continue to outlive men. According to 2015 World Bank data, the typical U.S. woman would live past 81, nearly five years longer than men.

For the last seven years, Allen, who likes to tie her long brown hair back in a ponytail when she's working, has been teaching classes, making home-improvement videos, sending out her own newsletter, conducting home visits, and appearing on dozens of local television shows — and once on Rachael Ray where she proferred painting tips, all aimed at helping women become tool-efficient.

She's even shot her own television pilot and posted it on YouTube. No takers yet, though.

"Ultimately, I want to be the Rachael Ray of the do-it-yourself world," she said.

Her focus, of course, is on women.

Her message seems to be resonating.

She's been teaching the class at the Bucks college since 2015 with full enrollment every time. This year, after a column on her appeared in a local newspaper, the class became so popular that the college added two more sections, one beginning later this month and the third in July. The cost? $119.

That's a lot less than Donna Anderson, 62, of Doylestown, shelled out when her sink started leaking. The plumber she called spent a couple of minutes tightening a gasket, then charged her $300.

"She said she felt so screwed," Allen recalled, and vowed "never again."

Anderson, a driver for an auto auction company, has become so confident that she has since knocked down a wall in her basement to expand her laundry room.

Anderson credited Allen for teaching her to know when a repairman is really needed.

"I'm now a faithful follower," she said. "I"m hooked."

The biggest hurdle, Allen said, is getting women to "flush the fear" and overcome the feeling that they can't do the work.

"The toilet is an inanimate object bolted to the floor. Don't be intimidated," she tells women.

Over the two-hour class Wednesday that focused on how to repair drywall and hang pictures safely, Allen offered a plethora of tips, demonstrated how to spackle, install wall anchors, and use a drill, then encouraged women to try it themselves.

Anthony diligently used her drill.

"That's perfect," encouraged her 41-year-old classmate and drill partner, who is from Germansville in Lehigh County.

"It's not really as hard as I thought it would be," Anthony said, looking surprised.

"Men just make it look hard," said her classmate, a volunteer coordinator for hospice.

Anthony said she always wanted to learn, but her dad wouldn't teach her. Girls didn't do that when she was growing up, she said.

"I was supposed to cook and clean," she said. "So now, I want to learn."

Not everyone got the hang of it immediately. Occasionally a drill made a loud, grinding sound when the screw wasn't going in right. It's called stripping.

"Somebody's stripping," Allen called out over her shoulder. "No stripping in class."

Born in Northeast Philadelphia, Allen grew up working with her mother on home-improvement projects. She remembers running her first electrical wires at 14 and changing a faucet at 17.

She got her bachelor's in nursing from Gwynedd Mercy University and spent about 10 years as a nurse. Then she took time off to raise her sons and "ripped my house apart," she said. She taught herself to tile, drywall, landscape, and do basic electric and plumbing. She redid her own kitchen and bathroom and built a pond in her backyard. Her husband, an engineer at Merck, helped.

"I made mistakes and I figured it out," she said.

She got a certificate in interior design from Temple and spent some time helping women who had money pick curtains and wallpaper.

But she decided what she really wanted was to empower women to do "weekend warrior" home-improvement projects themselves, with not a lot of money and not a lot of brawn.

Last year, she posted videos on social media every day, called 365 days of DIY (Do It Yourself), where she offered tips, from how to store paint to how to remove crayon from the wall with toothpaste (not the gel type).

She taught her first class at Hatboro-Horsham adult evening school. Her husband and sons helped her come up with the HIP Chicks name (HIP stands for home-improvement project) and a logo of an earring-clad chicken holding a drill. Her website, www.bethallendiy.com, offers videos, blog posts, and other examples of her work.

Students Kelli Hemple, 45, who works in pharmaceutical marketing research, and her sister-in-law, Jackie Ferri, 52, a program technician at the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance, came to the class ready to learn.

"It's just so we can get the little … stuff done that's always on the list and not waiting for the husband to do it," said Hemple, of Holland, "which is not a knock on the husbands. We just want to tackle some of this on our own."

Allen starts the course with tools 101. She brings her lot in from home and explains what each one does.

By Wednesday, the third session, Allen was offering advice on the proper use of command hooks, hanging heavy objects safely, finding a wall stud, safely securing furniture and televisions to prevent tipping, and using picture straighteners.

"I want to show you all these things because you don't know that they're out there," she told the women, "and they can solve some of your problems."

At the end, Allen prepped them for next week's class on plumbing and electrical  work.

"I want you to find out where the shut-off valve is for your water," she said. "That's your homework."