On a freezing Saturday morning, with snow flurries in the forecast, a handful of people braved the weather to watch Stephanie Kirchner give a clinic on tiling at the Home Depot in Cockeysville.
At a small demonstration area in the middle of the store, surrounded by buckets and wet saws and mixing compounds, Kirchner ticked off the pros and cons of three types of tile: ceramic, porcelain and natural stone.
While natural stone, the priciest of the three, is the Taj Mahal of the tile world, even that has a few negatives, she said.
"It's very beautiful but more difficult to install," Kirchner said. "It needs lots of treatments. Also it's difficult to clean."
Looking on with rapt attention was Mary Sturm of Upperco, who had just bought a condo in Bethany Beach, Del., and was interested in fixing up its two bathrooms.
"In order to afford the condo and do the [repair] work, too, I have to do some of the work myself," said Sturm.
With more consumers feeling the effects of the economic downturn - which shows no signs of lifting soon - the popularity of clinics and classes in home repair and home maintenance seems to be on the rise.
"What [we're] getting is a lot more of the do-it-yourselfers," said Corrie Grammer, specialty manager at the Home Depot.
He recalled a conversation a few days earlier with a couple who planned to install laminate in a powder room in their home.
"They said: 'If times were better, we'd have somebody else do it,' " Grammer said.
Instead, he continued, "they bought all the products they needed from start to finish" and headed off to plunge into their project.
Home Depot, the country's largest home-improvement retailer, offered free clinics this month on energy efficiency in the home, tiling floors and walls, closet organization and hanging drywall.
Its February clinics will be on painting, tiling, small-bath updates and installing interior lighting.
And while corporate spokeswoman Jennifer King said, "We don't track attendance of regular clinics," she added, "I definitely think we see an increase in people doing projects themselves or inquiring about projects they can do."
King said Home Depot's "do-it-herself workshops," started in 2003 for women do-it-yourselfers, have also been popular.
"We wanted to give women an environment where they could feel comfortable asking questions ... and learning with other women," she said. "It's been really successful."
