Home Repair Workshop For Women To Launch In SoHo

SOHO, NY — A woman-owned start-up will launch a 10-class home repair workshop in SoHo next Monday as a part of an effort to help teach more women apartment decorating hacks and home repair skills.

The workshop, started by Allison Geller of Astoria, first began as an idea last summer.

Sometime after Memorial Day last year, Geller says she was standing in her kitchen hopelessly attempting to hang up a metal wine glass rack. But she realized she didn't have a clue how to hang it up. Second, she didn't even have a drill.

At the time, she thought, "that's really sad that I can't do this."

"I feel so competent in every other area of my life," Geller said. "I feel so independent as a woman and as a person, but I can't do anything for myself in my apartment."

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When she couldn't find a home repair skills workshop online, the 28-year-old Astoria entrepreneur decided to start her own to avoid perpetually relying on her boyfriend, who had just left the city when she first sought to hang-up the wine glass rack, the building's superintendent, or odd jobs and freelance work app TaskRabbit.

Geller launched Ms. Fix It to offer home repair workshops — by women for women — to learn skills from drilling and plumbing basics to putting temporary wallpaper to avoid losing your security deposit at the end of a lease and hanging "cute sh-t you find on Etsy," her website says.

When she first began the process of launching Ms. Fix It, finding a woman instructor in particular was critical, she said.

"It was important for me to make it a community for women [with a woman instructor], especially because I feel like that is an environment that I feel comfortable learning around," Geller said.

She eventually found Taerra Pence, an opera singer and voice instructor, who already had a side-hustle offering handywoman work as The Practical Diva.

After a trial run of an introduction workshop, Geller's 10-class workshop, DIY & Decorating Fundamentals, starts next Monday, April 1 at the SoHo co-working space, The Farm.

Geller is offering the first class for 10 bucks, where home repair students will learn how to use basic tools and drilling.

All 10 classes cost $549, taught by home improvement contractor, Pence. Though the 15-person workshop runs $55 per class, Geller says the skills would save women money in the long-run with life-long repair skills.

The workshop includes one free hour of a one-on-one session to help people kickstart their apartment projects after the workshop, which runs through June 3.

After each class, wine will be served as a part of her idea to create a community through the start-up, said Geller.

In addition to the workshop, Geller's Ms. Fix It offers one-on-one sessions starting at $150 an hour as well as corporate workshops to bring a team-building home repair class to the office.

"For a lot of us, it's very unfamiliar," Geller said. "So it's fun because it becomes a very supportive atmosphere. We can all sort of laugh at ourselves and have fun learning."