Community Corner

HIP Chicks at Home

Horsham resident Beth Allen empowers women to tackle home improvement projects.

“The corporate Home Depot office just followed my Twitter feed,” said Beth Allen, smiling.

As the owner of the Horsham-based business HIP Chicks, or Home Improvement Project Chicks, Allen is helping empower women to
tackle the kind of roll-up-one’s-sleeves business that homeowners might normally call a handyman for.

Or is that handywoman?

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“I think that’s the whole goal, to teach women—and men, along the way—to be self-reliant and not have to call the handyman,” Allen said.          

As head of HIP Chicks, Allen primarily runs workshops showing women how to tackle minor home issues such as plumbing, weatherizing, repairing drywall, molding, cutting and installing ceramic tile and installing shelving. She brings tools and display pieces to ensure lessons are hands-on.

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She also serves as a HIP Chicks design consultant, helping women remodel their homes. Allen offers her services as a handywoman, but the kind that shows her client how to fix the problem herself.   

“I think there are many women right now who are single—getting married later—who don’t have a man in their life, getting divorced, widowed, and still grew up in that generation of daddies not teaching
girls to use tools,” Allen said. “And so I wanted to focus on other women, just to help them feel confident.”

Joan Evans, recently on her own after her husband died, attended a series of Allen’s workshops this year where she learned how to do minor plumbing and hang pictures, among other things. Evans also commissioned Allen into her home several times for repairs and decorating.

“[Allen] was putting up brackets for blinds and she put in some of the screws with an electric drill and then she said, ‘Now it’s your turn, Joan,’ " laughed Evans. “It wasn’t easy. It was the first time I had used an electric drill.”

While Allen grew up helping her mother complete DIY projects around the home, she first realized it was her calling after leaving her nursing career to care for her three sons at home. She took an interest in home improvement and started helping friends and family, who, according to Allen, suggested that she receive formal training and make a career of it.

After completing Temple University’s interior design program, Allen started a design business, Red Door Decor. In its four years she came across many clients who were in awe of her home improvement skills.

Allen and her family learned to tackle home improvement themselves. They have in fact installed a 1,100-gallon outdoor koi pond, remodeled their kitchen, did landscaping, installed thousands of square feet of ceramic tile, laid laminate flooring, took down non-weight-bearing walls, did ventilation duct work, wallpapered, installed built-in bookcases, sewed window treatments and more.

“There are so many women in particular out there who don’t know how to do so many of these things because dad never taught them when they were little, or even men who were growing up without fathers who were teaching them, families who were outsourcing everything,” she said. 

Having realized her passion for teaching others, Allen decided to approach the adult evening school about teaching a five-week DIY course. She had 15 people in the first session and 20 at the next. Then Cheltenham School District heard about it and asked her to teach it there. Then she taught courses at the Warminster Recreation Center.

HIP Chick’s Web site and Twitter feed recently went live and she is working on the production of several DIY videos to be posted on her Web site and YouTube. This month she will do a series of workshops at the Bucks County Antique Gallery in Chalfont and at Lomax in Montgomeryville. In October Allen will teach workshops at Hatboro-Horsham and for Cheltenham township. She also has plans for developing her own tool and tool accessory line exclusively for women.

“I used to refer to her as the 'Martha Stewart of Horsham,' because she can do just about anything,” said friend and client Susan Mitchell. “And she’s realistic. She’s not an over-extender and she is always looking for bargains for people.”  

Allen sees herself not as a bionic woman, but as the Rachel Ray of DIY: “I would very much like to be the face of the average woman who wants to learn to do these things for herself,” Allen said.

Someone once asked Allen how she has the moxie to do her own home improvement projects.

“As a nurse if I screw something up, somebody was hurt and there’s a real problem,” she said. “If I screw something up here at home, I pick up the phone and I call the professional electrician and say ‘Help.’ ”


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