WOMEN AND TOOLS: MORE POWER TO THEM; NORTHRIDGE MOM NAILS DOWN HOME IMPROVEMENT.

Byline: Jenifer Hanrahan Daily News Staff Writer

Jeanne Macpherson's seven kids wreaked havoc on her 80-year-old Northridge house.

Horseplay left holes in doors and walls. Wayward balls shattered windows.

Then one night two of her sons decided to sneak out the bathroom window, using the commode as a step ladder.

The toilet cracked. Macpherson was determined that she wouldn't crack too.

Her husband had recently died of cancer, leaving her with the responsibility of rearing her brood and taking care of three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a guest house and a one-acre back yard.

When the out-of-order commode put a serious crimp in the family's day-to-day activities, she went to a hardware store, asked lots of questions, came home with a wrench and a new latrine.

A few hours and broken nails later, her household was back in flushing order.

``I couldn't waste the money on a plumber when I knew I could do it myself,'' Macpherson said.

More than 14 million women in the United States live alone - some by design and others by death or divorce - and home improvement is increasingly in their hands.

For many, necessity is the mother of innovation. They are signing up for home improvement classes at local home-improvement superstores, buying how-to books and tool sets.

They are just as likely to be found prowling the aisles of a nursery or a building supply store as any boutique.

They know the difference between a heat gun and a blow-dryer, an emery cloth and an emery board.

They are women who have discovered that ``do-it-yourself'' doesn't just apply to husbands, that troubleshooting a circuit breaker isn't biologically reserved for the male of the species, that clogged gutters don't necessarily mean calling in reinforcements.

Now an employee at Rudy's Ace Hardware in Woodland Hills, Macpherson answers home improvement questions for men and women alike.

``A lot of my customers are older women,'' Macpherson said. ``Their husbands die and they have nobody to depend on. Sometimes they don't want to hire somebody. It's expensive and they don't know if they can trust them in their home.''

``With the right tools and the right merchandise, women can do just about anything.''

Lorenzo Llubien, assistant manager at Home Depot in Canoga Park, estimates 30 percent of his customers are women. In the home-improvement classes offered every hour at the Home Depot on the weekends, about 50 percent of the students are women learning such skills as laying tile, installing kitchen cabinets, plumbing basics, hanging wallpaper and lawn care.

Nancy Deters, 37, found herself in a predicament after her divorce. Raising a child alone, she found making repairs to the house in Thousand Oaks where she lives with her parents financially out of reach.

``Mostly everything I learned, I learned from the back of a can,'' said Deters, who parlayed her wisdom into a job as a resident expert at Home Depot in Canoga Park. ``It's trial and error. If you don't get it right the first time, you try again.''

But she admits that fear almost stopped her from trying. What if she hung the wallpaper and the pattern didn't match up? And what about the time she hooked up the washing machine hot and cold water hoses wrong, coming within a spin cycle of turning her whites pink?

Allegra Bennett, author of ``Renovating Woman: A Guide to Home Repair, Maintenance and Real Men'' (Simon & Schuster; $22) thinks she has a solution.

Bennett is something of a guru of everything from ground fault circuit interrupters to grass clippings.

Her book, published in April, includes a glossary of contractor lingo, diagrams of the innards of a house and even dating tips: ``A Real Man will offer to climb the ladder first but he will hold the ladder steady if she insists on making the trip up herself.''

But it wasn't always so easy. Bennett was the proud owner of a three-story, 11-room, 70-year-old Victorian-style house when she and her husband went splitsville.

When the garbage disposal clogged - again - she did what she always did: called her husband (now her ex), who considered himself something of an expert in all things technical, electrical and mechanical.

``As far as I was concerned, it was a guy thing,'' she said. ``He started talking about aerating and snaking and getting a balance of oxygen. I had no idea what he was talking about.'

Calling a high-priced plumber was out of the question, so she crept downstairs to the basement. Soon she discovered the culprit: the hose from the dishwasher was too long, causing chronic drainage blockages.

She snipped the excess tubing and solved the clogging permanently.

``And I thought he was doing something magical down there,'' Bennett said.

Her curiosity piqued, Bennett, then an editorial writer for the Washington Times, went on a shopping spree - for tools.

With her new power drill and screwdriver set, she repaired a gutter, put up a living room ceiling, repaired a porch roof and installed wall-to-wall carpeting.

``Once they were done and I was successful at it, it juiced me up,'' Bennett said. ``Men are conditioned to be knights in shining armor. Women are conditioned to be damsels in distress. It doesn't have to be that way.''

Sandra Byrd, 36, of Malibu had never even planted a bulb when she quit her job in public relations seven years ago and went to work in a nursery. Wanting to further develop her expertise, she later apprenticed with a tile-worker and a custom-order woodworker.

After she got married, she and her husband, a former plumber, put their skills to work and built their own house.

``It makes me feel as a woman as though I have more personal power,'' Byrd said. ``I don't have to wait for a man to come and do something for me. I can get a saw out and build my own doghouse. I can drain a water heater.''

But what about women who know they could learn about home improvement if they wanted to, but just have no desire?

Women who know contractor's jargon, who know about how long it takes to do a job and what's entailed, will be better equipped to hire scrupulous and fairly priced contractors, she says.

To get started, a woman doesn't need to go buy a set of fancy tools, Bennett says. Instead, she says, ``take the lid off the toilet and just look.''

Visit a hardware store and ask questions. Go to the library and read up on household fixtures like heat pumps and furnaces.

And most importantly, know you can do it.

``Men tend to jump in without really investigating the best way to do something,'' Bennett said. ``They'll use a hammer when all it needed was a gentle touch. Women don't mind looking things up and asking a lot of questions. Men resist that. I guess they think they were supposed to have been born with the information, or they are naturally intuitive about that stuff. But they're not. Not any more than women.''

For Macpherson, the time after her husband's death was a never-ending series of home repair crises: broken windows and fists through doors.

Her hands-on experience with life's household mishaps allowed her to leave her waitressing job and land a job at a hardware store.

``I have all kinds of men coming in here asking me how to put a new plug on an electrical cord, or change the flapper in the toilet, or how to stop a leaky faucet,'' she said.

Macpherson, who has since remarried, now does most of her home-improvement projects with her second husband, Douglas, a retired hardware store manager. Their latest project is laying a kitchen floor. They also recently put in a brick walkway and a cedar fence around the pool.

But because he has a bad back, she said, ``I do most of the heavy stuff.''

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Handy women; Snaking drains, grouting tile, laying sod - it's not just a man's job anymore.

(2) Jeanne Macpherson lays a new wood floor for her kitchen - just one of the many things she has learned in order to improve her Northridge home.

(3) Home repair needn't be a wrenching experience for women.

Terri Thuente/Daily News