(KRT) - Do it yourself.

It wasn't always so easy, even for people who know which end of the hammer is supposed to strike the nail.

But as two anniversaries and a museum exhibit show this year, the idea eventually grabbed hold of the American imagination and marketplace.

Until 1917, electric drills were so heavy it took two husky men to operate them. Then two guys in Baltimore came up with the first portable electric drill.

Alonzo Decker and S. Duncan Black didn't start out to make a drill 85 years ago. They were working on a bid to redesign parts for a Colt .45 revolver when it hit them that a pistol grip and finger trigger could make drilling a one-person job.

Still, it wasn't until World War II that Black & Decker's portable drill hit home with the public. When the Japanese crippled the U.S. Pacific fleet in their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Decker's son Al Jr. ordered hundreds of power tools shipped to Hawaii to help repair the damage.

Black & Decker's drill thus became part of the wartime industrial assembly line. Defense contractors began complaining to Decker that his drills were disappearing from their factories in great numbers, allegedly smuggled home by women workers in their lunch baskets.

Most women weren't stealing the drills, Chrysanthe Broikos says in their defense.

"They were borrowing them over the weekend to work on projects at home," said Broikos, curator of an exhibition titled "Do It Yourself: Home Improvement in 20th Century America," that opens Oct. 19 at the National Building Museum in Washington.

The exhibit was first proposed in 1997 by former museum curator Carolyn Goldstein, who prepared a catalog that was published in 1998.

"`Do it yourself' is always very broadly defined," said Goldstein, now curator of Lowell National Park in Massachusetts. "To some people, it's just fixing things. To others, it's building an entire addition. It depends on interest and skill level.

"People who do their own work aren't necessarily without funds to hire people," she said. "But for the middle class, it follows economic cycles in two ways: It allows you to make more of your house when you can't afford to buy a new one, and it helps you maintain middle-class status even when your income declines."

Although the do-it-yourself movement got its start at the turn of the last century, it was relatively slow-moving until World War II, Broikos said.

"Until the 1880s, unless you were a farmer, you had to be fairly well off to own a house," she said. "You didn't do your own work because you could afford to pay someone to do the work for you. You wouldn't own your own tools."

As the middle class grew in the latter years of the 19th century and homeownership within it increased, so did leisure time.

"The do-it-yourself movement began among the middle class as a hobby, even though most homeowners turned to professionals for home-improvement projects," Broikos said. That hobby was woodworking, and the focus, in the 1880s at least, was on things that could be created with scroll saws.

"The scroll saw, which was operated by a foot pedal, was very much like a sewing machine, so women were as fascinated by the tool as men," Broikos said.

Home workshops began appearing at this time, and so did specialty magazines catering to woodworkers, including the Craftsman, which focused on constructing simple pieces of furniture. The magazine also introduced the phrase "do it yourself in a 1912 article that encouraged people to paint their houses instead of hiring professionals.

In the 1920s, magazines such as Better Homes & Gardens, House Beautiful, and Popular Mechanics piqued the curiosity of homeowners, and manufacturers began marketing products directly to consumers instead of just to the construction trade.

There were "before" and "after" bathroom-remodeling competitions, even though the work was done by professionals. Modernization became the watchword of the `20s, and the manufacturers of appliances, paints, flooring, etc., directed their campaigns to consumers in mass-circulation magazines and on the radio.

In the 1930s, government efforts to increase homeownership helped boost the market for do-it-yourself ideas suited to a nation on a limited income. When the Federal Housing Administration was created by the National Housing Act in 1934, it provided federally guaranteed mortgages as well as home-improvement loans up to $2,000.

World War II and massive employment of women "increased the skill and confidence level of both men and women," Broikos said. "The women had the tools in hand and learned to make do with limited materials."

Men, especially those on the front lines, learned survival skills such as making shelters with packing crates and using tin cans for chimneys and empty wooden ammunition boxes for furniture.

On the home front, civilians were urged, according to American Home magazine, to "repair for defense."

"After the war, with the rise of suburbia, more people than ever before owned their own homes and were undertaking projects such as finishing basements, garages and attics to add space for their growing families," Broikos said.

Al Decker Jr. played no small part in the postwar do-it-yourself boom, Black & Decker spokesman David Olsen said. Decker's efforts during the war gave him enough clout to talk his board of directors into introducing the Home Utility line of inexpensive consumer power drills in 1946.

The price of a quarter-inch drill was about $25. By 1951, 1 million had been sold, Olsen said.

Why focus on the drill? Because it was versatile. With attachments, a drill could saw holes in doors for locks, sand down paint, and polish cars.

As Black & Decker celebrates 85 years in the power-drill business, Craftsman, Sears' consumer tool line, is marking 75 years.

Spokesman Mike Mangan said Sears Roebuck & Co. acquired the Craftsman trademark in 1927 for $500.

Craftsman's offering for 1927 was a hand-forged and machined reversible ratchet, Mangan said. Two years later, it introduced its half-inch and quarter-inch electric drills, which the Sears catalog described as "powerful, ruggedly constructed, well-balanced and easily handled."

Even during the Depression, Craftsman introduced tools. For $38, the catalog offered an 8-inch benchtop saw, an "electric hand saw" (something like today's circular saw) for $36.50, and a vise with an anvil for $2.50.

"It took awhile, but manufacturers and others in the building business began offering tools and materials designed for home use," Broikos said. "For example, lumberyards began offering wood in quantities that were more useful to the homeowner than the contractor, while still providing that material to the building trades."

By the 1950s, Business Week was heralding "the age of do it yourself." Pundits, notably cartoonists such as Morris Brickman, made America laugh at the extremes of do-it-yourselfers, but millions continued to buy home-improvement magazines and contributed to expanded product lines and the expansion of hardware stores, traditional retailers such as Sears, specialty stores, and the mail-order industry.

In 1979, Atlanta's Home Depot came up with the idea of a retail home-improvement warehouse, and now has 1,300 such stores around the country.

Over the decades, surveys showed many homeowners did their own work to save money. But that, Goldstein said, was only a part of it.

"For many American families, home-improvement activities provided a way of obtaining the house and lifestyle to which they aspired - a way of participating in the American dream," Goldstein said. "Do it yourself resonated as a quintessential expression of that dream."

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If You Go

What: "Do It Yourself: Home Improvement in 20th Century America."

When: Oct. 19 through Aug. 10, 2003.

Where: National Building Museum, 401 F St. NW, Washington, D.C.

Hours: Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Admission: Free.

Information: 202-272-2448;

http://www.nbm.org/

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© 2002, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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