This is NPR's Life Kit, I'm TK DuTest.

I've been moving a lot these past few years and in my quest to make a house a home,

I've made some mistakes in the pursuit of handiness.

Using the wrong tools, making holes in walls,

falling for promises made by late night as seen on TV in commercials.

We've all been there. What's really real is that until something pops up, we never think about it,

or even worse, we get to a household issue when it's too far gone.

From putting up a photo frame to unclogging the toilet, it's always a great time to learn how to be handy.

And yeah man, it can be intimidating.

We've been socialized to fear the hardware store and second guess ourselves when we talk to handy people.

But now that we have places like YouTube and other social media as resources,

we have the power of a thousand hammers at our disposal.

So, I called up an expert who you may have seen pop up on your TikTok for you page.

Help. How do I fix this?

Hey there, highmanies, Mercury and I'm the Trans Handman.

First and foremost, this is a holocore door, which means it's a pretty...

Mercury Stardust has been a maintenance technician for 14 years.

She started making TikToks in March 2021 and no one really watched them at first, you know.

I ran a weekly burlesque show here in Tropical Madison, Wisconsin,

and I needed to get an audience. So, my friends told me,

you know what would be a great thing is if you went on TikTok because you can get a big

audience really quickly and I went, okay, yeah sure.

...