by Jess McCuan / photos by Anthony Bellemare

"I was born and raised to punch a clock, so that’s what I did," says the Chicago native, who worked as a customer service representative for publishing companies in Chicago and Denver for 20 years before moving to Florida in 1998. In Florida, she struggled to find a job at first and started tagging along with a friend to home-renovation projects. Then it struck her: "Wouldn’t it be cool to have your own truck and your own tools?" Not long after, she landed the publishing job she was angling for but turned it down, and she’s been a handywoman most of the time since. Some days, what makes her happiest is the mere fact of climbing into her van knowing that, for the most part, she’s setting her own schedule for the day.

O’Toole loves hearing people’s stories. In her next life, she says she might want to go back to school and become some sort of mediator. In the meantime, she likes sorting out people’s house-related problems. That could mean weeding the garden or burying an animal that died under the porch or getting any number of gadgets to stop beeping, buzzing or otherwise malfunctioning. "Sometimes, people just want you to take over," she says.

Rita Babraitis, 64

Nearly all of Babraitis’s clients are women, and teaching them how to fix things is one of the joys of her work. "If you can bake a cake and follow directions, you can learn to handle a drill," says Barbraitis, a former field hockey coach and summer program director at Asheville’s Carolina Day School. Babraitis, a "frugal New Englander" who grew up 40 miles outside of Boston, also worked as the athletic promotion director at UNC-Asheville. As a handywoman, she likes being able to work 25 to 30 hours a week when she wants. She also likes listening to books on tape. Hire Babraitis for a paint job and yes, she may be coating your walls in aristocrat peach or Dutch tile blue, but she’ll also be getting a lesson on Egyptian archaeology, either from a tape deck or her iPod. "It sends you to a whole other realm while you’re painting," she says. In fact, while she wouldn’t want to be a full-time plumber, leaning down to look under a sink can be like yoga. "It beats going to the gym," she says.

While Babraitis believes the best tools are your hands, she also believes you can do just about anything with WD-40, from removing paint and un-sticking windows to getting chewing gum out of your hair. When she comes across a problem that WD-40 just won’t solve, her best advice is to go online and look for simple suggestions.

Judith Baker, 64

Rather than working against her, Judith Baker finds that being a woman in the trades is quite an asset. "We get calls from a lot of women who have not been treated all that well by male contractors," she says. Baker, who grew up in Royal Oak, Michigan, retired from the U.S. Postal Service in 2004 after working in maintenance management and other positions there for 32 years. She’s experimented with home-improvement projects over the years, but did dramatic renovations on a Montford house that she bought a year ago: plumbing repairs and roofing, a complete overhaul of the kitchen and bathroom, new windows and a brand new deck. Take all of that, plus her background in maintenance at the postal service, and voila! Judith Baker became Rosie the Renovator.

The raw analytical skills and ability to work with her hands came from her father, who worked as a journeyman welder for Chevrolet for 42 years. Strangely, since she’s been working as a handywoman, she’s been drawn to more artistic work, mainly designing and installing bathroom tile. For the first time in her life, she’s able to do work that combines both her technical skill and some artistic flair. She might slice up a stack of tiles and then go out of her way to incorporate an intricate marble inset into one piece. "It can be very creative," she says, "and yet it’s very technical. When you start cutting tile, there’s no forgiving."