Why I bought my own chainsaw: Our Best Life

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CLEVELAND, Ohio — When we bought our first house, I bought a cordless electric drill. I felt like a superhero wielding it to whirr screws in my curtain rods.

Years later, I bought a string trimmer and a hedge trimmer. And I embraced mowing the lawn with our electric mower, after I got over the fear of cutting off my toe. I regularly read This Old House magazine.

But aside from taking woodworking in eighth grade, I had never embraced tools.

When I needed shrubs removed or tree branches cut, I called my dad or my brother. They were the ones with a big, dangerous, gas-powered chain saw. My job was just to lug the branches to the tree lawn.

Until I woke up one Saturday morning with a burning need to plant a privacy screen of arborvitae in my back yard.

I had gotten an estimate for an actual fence, at nearly $5,000. That was not happening. But I wanted to block a neighbor’s chain-link fence and create a pretty backdrop for the view out my kitchen window.

Hence the arborvitae.

Thankfully, they were half off at Petitti Garden Center, so I bought 13 of the 3-gallon Green Giant variety and stuffed them in my SUV.

But to create a uniform row, I had to get rid of four ugly evergreens I’d hated since we moved in nine years ago. Which meant I needed someone to cut them down.

And at age 45, I decided that should be myself, with help from a couple of handy friends.

I spent hours sawing off limbs with a bow saw. And then I bought a 10-inch, battery-powered chainsaw for about $100.

It was so jaunty and petite, with an easy-to-charge battery, it wasn’t intimidating at all.

I let a friend handle the chainsaw first. But once I tried it, it was amazing.

Related: How handy are you in Our Best Life?

Tennis is my favorite stress release, wailing on a happy yellow ball. But buzzing through branches felt like a close second. I felt like Tim “The Toolman” Taylor. Arr arr arr arr!

(As an aside, I recently rewatched the pilot of the show “Home Improvement” on Netflix, for nostalgia’s sake, and was totally appalled by the sexism.)

When the chain got stuck, I even took it off carefully, cleaned it and put it back on, with oil.

Once the limbs were down, my friend used a Sawzall to cut them into firewood. By the time we cut the trees down to stumps, I had a stack of logs ready for our fire pit this summer.

Women account for 40% of all tool sales, according to ABC News.

Single women make up about 19% of homebuyers, nearly double single men, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Home Depot executive Ann-Marie Campbell told ABC that women get tired of waiting for someone else to do the work. They think, “‘Hey, I can do this myself. I don’t need my husband or my mate to do it for me or a friend.’”

That’s exactly why I bought a chainsaw. I don’t want to have to depend on someone else to do projects.

In 2017, women DIYers reported spending nearly four hours per weekend on projects, according to the Economist. Mid-COVID pandemic in 2022, that jumped to nearly five hours.

(That’s when I ripped out carpet in my bedroom and dreamed up a whole plan to renovate our attic into a primary suite, a nine-month job we paid professionals to do .)

The host of Magnolia Network’s “Problem Spaces,” Fariha Nasir, bought her first power tools — a miter saw and brad nailer — in her quest to transform her bland builder-grade home into her dream oasis.

“I decided to take things into my own hands,” she told House Digest. “I taught myself how to use power tools [and] do simple projects around the house to get that high-end designer look that cost a lot of money.”

I’m all for saving money.

I like yard work. I like accomplishing a task in the fresh air and seeing a job well done, in a couple hours of work. A bed of fresh mulch, neat rows on the lawn, plants blooming merrily.

The feeling of satisfaction is intoxicating, knowing your ingenuity and effort solved a problem.

For example, the igniter on our Weber grill no longer worked, meaning that my husband was sticking a lighter into a cloud of gas to try to light a flame. Understandably, he was not keen to grill.

I refuse to be kept from a fresh burger. So, I googled the problem, tried putting in a new battery. (I didn’t even know it had a battery!) Then ordered a new igniter and switched it out. Voila! A click and then fire!

I was thrilled.

I’d much rather mow the lawn than make dinner. And I’d much rather be busy than bored.

Of course, that leaves my husband to make dinner, and occasionally shuttle kids to sports, while I make rash decisions to do things like paint our porch ceiling haint blue on an otherwise free Sunday afternoon.

I finished the ceiling after dark. But now I have an entire summer to enjoy it.

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