TOOL MAN; RON HAZELTON'S MOTOR HOME IS COMING TO YOUR TV WITH ABC'S `HOUSECALLS'.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Staff Writer

You could call him the Bob Vila of the 2000s without the I-always-do-it-right attitude, or liken him to fictional tool man Tim Taylor without the exploding nail guns and know-it-all sidekick.

But Ron Hazelton, ``Good Morning America's'' resident home improvement expert who hosts his own new TV show starting 4:30 a.m. Sunday on ABC-TV, prefers that viewers just regard him as the friendly neighbor down the block who can build or repair almost anything - if not on the first try, then maybe the second.

``I've always tried to include more of the human experience in home improvement,'' Hazelton said with a grin, relaxing at a Van Nuys studio in between taping promos for a History Channel series on tools that he narrated. ``I'm trying to include the frustration and the mistakes people actually feel when things don't go right the first time. That way, I can teach them what to do to fix it and make it right. Making mistakes is very instructive.''

Hazelton, who from 1989 to 1996 hosted ``The House Doctor'' for San Francisco station KGO-TV (reruns currently air nationally on HGTV), is taking home improvement on the road with his new show, ``Ron Hazelton's HouseCalls.'' He drives around the country in a motor home towing a portable workshop, helping folks with their home-repair projects.

``I'm like Charles Kuralt with a screwdriver,'' he said. ``I'm exploring home improvement as a family project. I'm putting power tools in the hands of kids - with supervision. If the kids can be involved creatively, feel like they're contributing to their own home, that's got a lot of potential.''

On the first show, he helps a mother and her teen-age daughter build a window box, and a husband and wife build porch railings. The homeowners provide the materials, and Hazelton provides the tools and the know-how.

The new show, which has a folksy feel (the tool guy stops to ``build'' a cherry pie with a family of Midwestern bakers) and a you-can-do-it outlook, should provide welcome information to do-it-yourselfers - and ideas for future projects for those not quite ready to take the power-tool plunge.

Home-improvement shows - from how to cook and how to grow to how to decorate and how to build - have been popular since the 1960s. Audiences have learned the fine points of nesting from Julia Child, Martha Stewart and Bob Vila before Hazelton stepped before a camera.

And the fix-it-up genre shows no signs of waning as network, public and cable stations schedule more how-to-do-it programs, and entire channels - the Food Network, Home and Garden TV and others - capture viewers' imaginations, making them believe that they can, indeed, do it themselves.

Seeing improvements done on TV how-to shows is how 22 percent of consumers get ideas about how to fix or build projects at home, according to a recent survey by the American Express Retail Index.

It's apparent that the do-it-yourself wave that settled over suburbia in the 1950s is alive and well, and now the whole family is included, said Hazelton.

``Home improvement with women these days is huge - huge,'' he said. ``Half of my audience has always been women. Now more women are actually doing the buying (of tools and materials) than men. Even more of them are actually getting their hands in it and doing the work. Why? I think part of it is the fun. They enjoy doing it.

``Part of it is that they don't want to wait around for a man to do whatever. They want to feel in control of their space. And I think there is that level of satisfaction that is almost always a high: `I did that. I made that.' ''

And children are eager to learn things that just seemed to come naturally to past generations of kids as they watched their dads, who had learned from their dads, fix things around the house.

Like many kids of the post-World War II generation, Hazelton and his brother learned how to use tools from their father, a Massachusetts plasterer who seemed to be able to operate any tool, make any repair, build anything.

``I grew up playing in his workshop,'' Hazelton said. ``My father gave us a few tools, and I spent my summers building soapbox racers.''

After a stint in the Navy, Hazelton went into advertising, eventually becoming vice president of a big Boston agency. But after several years, the need to work with his hands again began to gnaw at him. He quit his job, divorced his wife and headed West on a motorcycle with only what the saddlebags would hold.

Four months later, he wound up in San Francisco, where he opened his own small furniture-refinishing business. To try to drum up business, he approached the local television station with an offer to go on-camera with home-improvement tips.

His career as a tool guy was born.

After doing 600 home-improvement segments on more than 200 shows, ``Good Morning America'' made him its tool guy. He not only got a new job, he got a second wife: his ``GMA'' producer, Lynn. The two, married just two years, live in a New York City apartment, and Hazelton's chafing at the lack of a workshop.

``We're going to be looking for a house to buy,'' Lynn Hazelton said. ``Ron needs his space. All his tools are crammed into a closet. He does do stuff around the house, though - and he's teaching me, too. In fact, I installed our dining-room chandelier - with his supervision. He takes the fear and mystery out of home improvement.''

It's a good idea to learn how tools work, what a job entails and what the finished product should look like, even if you don't plan to roll up your sleeves and build a deck or add a room to your house, Hazelton advises.

Hazelton has mixed feelings about the proliferation of big chain home-improvement stores and the resulting shutdown of mom-and-pop hardware stores, which were treasure troves of camaraderie and knowledge.

``Those old stores couldn't stock everything, but if you lived in a neighborhood where all the houses were built in the 1940s and all the sinks used a particular kind of washer, you could always find that washer at the local hardware store,'' he said. ``So you'd go there to find stuff like that, and for advice.

``But most of the small stores just can't compete, price-wise, so you go to the big home centers for the prices.''

On the other hand, the chain stores - with weekend classes in how to lay tile, refinish furniture or grout a bathtub - have made home improvement a can-do proposition for novices, he said.

``That's what we're trying to show people on `HouseCalls,' '' Hazelton said. ``Home improvement is not hard, as long as you have the proper tools and know how to use them - and are willing to do the work. On the show, we start at 7 o'clock in the morning and sometimes don't finish until 3 o'clock the next morning. But we always finish. And the homeowner has learned a lot along the way.''

The Facts

The show: ``Ron Hazelton's HouseCalls.''

The plans: ``Good Morning America'' house expert Hazelton travels the country in a motor home - towing a portable workshop - and helps people do home improvements.

The time: 4:30 a.m. Sunday (time slots like these are what VCRs were made for).

The place: KABC (Channel 7).

Just give us a hammer

When the winter rains drip to a stop and the first green leaves of spring begin to appear, home improvement stores begin to fill with optimistic do-it-yourselfers.

All the plans made so carefully during those wet winter weekends can finally be carried out - with enough time and money and know-how.

This year, 36 percent of American households planned to spend nearly $3,000 each to complete some kind of home improvement or redecorating project, according to the American Express Retail Index, an annual survey of about 800 consumers from across the country.

This year's fixer-uppers had a variety of plans, and many had more than one in mind: 41 percent of those questioned scheduled interior decorating projects, 32 percent had renovation or remodeling planned, 23 percent were installing new landscaping, 22 percent had their eye on exterior decorating, and another 22 percent were going to get around to long-delayed maintenance projects.

Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed said they planned to do the work themselves. Sixty-nine percent planned to dip into savings to pay for their projects, 23 percent said they'd use a tax refund, and 17 percent said they'd use their credit cards.

If money were no object, said survey subjects, they'd (in order of preference) build a room addition, remodel a room, sell their house and buy a new one, completely remodel their home or relandscape. While 51 percent would leave such major projects to a professional contractor, 34 percent said they'd do at least the planning - and probably most of the work - on their own.

And the folks doing all that work are mostly young homeowners, said Dick Johnston, senior research analyst for the Home Improvement Research Institute.

``The older baby boomers - the ones in their 50s - are doing less and less. They say, `We've been there, done that; do it for me.' And they have enough money to hire professionals,'' he said.

HIRI is predicting a rise in the purchase of home improvement materials and tools this year but forsees less of an increase in 2000 and 2001 than in the late '90s. The industry expects a lull of several years as older baby boomers complete their projects and hang up their tools and the Generation X-ers buy their own homes and start their own foray into home repair, Johnston said.

- Carol Bidwell

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, box

PHOTO (1 -- cover -- color) Home Improvement expert Ron Hazelton nails down his own show.

(2) Ron Hazelton's tool-equipped motor home is traveling the country for his ``HouseCalls'' home-improvement show on ABC-TV. ``I'm like Charles Kuralt with a screwdriver,'' he says.

(3) Ron Hazelton, in Van Nuys taping a promo for a History Channel documentary he narrated on tools, isn't afraid to make a home-improvement mistake, and he loves helping others learn from their mishaps, too.

Eric Grigorian/Special to the Daily News

Box: Just give us a hammer (see text)