When Plaskos got her start in the construction industry 17 years ago, things looked very different for her then they do today.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I would work for other contractors, it was very hard to get hired as a female labourer or even in trades,\u201d she says. \u201cGuys would bark at me. When I would walk on-site they wouldn\u2019t talk to me. If I had a male working with me, people would always direct their questions to them.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, Plaskos runs Fix It Females \u2014 a renovation company in Toronto that was founded in 2004 and predominantly employs women. She was having trouble getting hired onto male crews and wanted to do what she loved. When she realized there were clients out there who were eager to work with female contractors specifically, Plaskos jumped into the new niche with both feet. \u201cI created this company to provide a platform for women where we can do the work we\u2019re good at, without worrying about being judged by the people we\u2019re working for.\u201d<\/p>\n In Canada, only 4.4 percent of current apprentices across 72 different skills are women. In British Columbia, 91 percent of tradespeople are currently employed with a median wage of $31 an hour, or $60,000 a year. This is a high-paying, skilled profession that Plaskos would like more women to view as a viable career path.<\/p>\n \u201cIt starts when you\u2019re young,\u201d she says. \u201cThis stuff is instilled in you when you\u2019re a kid and I think if you have the acceptance that you need, that will help everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n Plaskos never wants gender to be a deciding factor for anything. \u201cI know Fix It Females is so female driven and I get people saying, \u2018Oh, you only hire females\u2019 and that\u2019s not true either. We hire people all across the spectrum. The name welcomes people from all walks of life,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Amelia Lee is the founder of Undercover Architect and has over 20 years of experience in the industry designing, building and renovating family homes. She recalled an experience in a blog post <\/a>where two tradespeople showed up to install a fence. Instead of letting her brief them, they said they would just wait for her husband to come home.<\/p>\n With attitudes like these, it\u2019s easy to see why companies like Fix It Females are in such high demand. \u201cWe have a client who is literally willing to pay for us to stay at a hotel while we do her renovation in Orillia,\u201d says Plaskos. \u201cShe told me, \u2018I\u2019m so sick of dealing with the same person, different contractor.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been doing this for 17 years and I still get mansplained on stuff,\u201d says Plaskos. Instead of patronizing her clients, she likes to inform them. \u201cI like to tell people how things work so that when I\u2019m costing it out, they know why it\u2019s priced that way and they know what work goes into it. It\u2019s not like, \u2018You know you\u2019ve got studs in your home, right?\u2019 Yeah, of course I know that. Now tell me what those studs do.\u201d<\/p>\n Statistics from the US revealed that single women made up 17 percent of the American market, purchasing homes at twice the rate of single men.<\/p>\n More women are maintaining, repairing and renovating their homes than ever before and they don\u2019t need anyone to \u201cput a ring on it\u201d to make it happen.<\/p>\n In 2004, Zanganas sold her condo and took a big leap to purchase a five-bedroom, two-bathroom semi-detached, built in 1904 and located in Toronto\u2019s up-and-coming Little Italy neighbourhood. She stretched her budget and paid $456,000 for a fixer-upper, with the mission to renovate it almost entirely on her own. She gutted the entire first floor with the help of friends and family and brought her dad in to help with the electrical. \u201cThe stuff that I couldn’t do myself was structural,\u201d she says. \u201cRemoving walls, I had to hire somebody. Same with plumbing. But I did everything else myself or with the help of friends and family.\u201d Running a graphic design business at the time, she even created her own drawings to get a permit from the city.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the best decision I\u2019ve ever made,\u201d she says. \u201cIt gave me so much confidence that I own this property. To look at it and say, \u2018I built this.\u2019 It makes me realize you don\u2019t have to rely on anybody \u2014 it\u2019s all you.\u201d<\/p>\n Zanganas completed the majority of the renovation over three years, learning along the way from project to project. She did this mostly by asking friends and family but she also watched a lot of Holmes on Holmes<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cI hate to say this, but the renovation shows did help me,\u201d she says. \u201cI know contractors don\u2019t appreciate when people think they can watch a show and all of the sudden, they\u2019re the experts. But one of the issues that we ran into is that they cut into the beam in the bathroom ceiling. Even before the contractor told me, when I walked into my washroom, I knew what was wrong because I\u2019d seen it on Holmes on Holmes.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThose home renovation shows are great to get your head around the general way construction works,\u201d says Plaskos. But she also emphasizes that the timelines are way off. \u201cNo bathroom in this world would take two days to complete,\u201d she says. \u201cIt really hurts because people will come to me and when I tell them it takes two to three to maybe four weeks to complete a bathroom, they\u2019re shocked.\u201d<\/p>\n Plaskos stresses the importance of educating yourself on the process, regardless of gender. \u201cI would encourage all people that if they want to buy a house, get some background on the home and learn a couple things about renovations so that you know that drywall isn\u2019t going to cost you $30,000 for one room. Get some ideas about what you can expect.\u201d<\/p>\n Meet two women building homes, renovating attitudes and making the term ‘handyman’ a thing of the past. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":195047,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"2019-08-17T13:24:34Z","apple_news_api_id":"23ef5a89-5b75-4958-9ded-d141c1646c9c","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2019-08-19T14:29:47Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABg==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AI-9aiVt1SVid7dFBwWRsnA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"middle","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":["https:\/\/u48r14.digitalhub.com\/sections\/09b86915-7d2b-3acd-915b-b215002d01b7"],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11108],"tags":[11132,11137,11136],"coauthors":[10245],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.livabl.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/women-running-renos-fix-it-females.jpg\")
<\/a>Photo: Fix It Females\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\nBuilding a business from the ground up.<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.livabl.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/women-in-construction-banner.jpg\")
<\/a>Photo: c.e.floyd\/Instagram\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\nBreaking down walls and barriers.<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.livabl.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Despina-Zanganas-women-renovating.jpeg\")
<\/a>Photo: Despina Zanganas’ main floor\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nLearning the nuts and bolts behind renovations.<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.livabl.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/women-renovating-educate-yourself.jpg\")
<\/a>Photo: Farah Ghazel <\/a>via Despina\u00a0<\/a>Zanganas<\/a><\/em><\/p>\nEducating yourself.<\/h2>\n