It is no surprise to me that retail outlets catering to home improvement projects have been doing well during the pandemic and various iterations of stay-at-home orders. The sudden 'found' time of folks who might normally spend time on other endeavors is suddenly focused into projects around the house. To some degree this is the same here...

The Backlog of Projects

Personally, the time of stay-at-home hasn't necessarily been working through a backlog of projects, though there definitely have been a few. It's been more of an opportunity to lazily work through some of the things that just need to be done. Combined with the springtime normalcy, it's been as good a time as ever to work on some projects while it's still cool(er) than the summer...and definitely while it remains more or less bug-free.

In no particular order, a few of the pandemic projects I've worked on include:

• Powerwashing and scrubbing down the decks;
• Water-sealing the horizontal deck surfaces;
• Rerouting and substantially extending the outdoor sump hose and drain path to the lowest spot in our back yard;
• Finally properly supporting the full length of fixed outdoor sump pipe (beneath the deck);
• Felling a 35-foot tall dead ash tree, which had been staring me down for the better part of five years;
• Building out an equipment box/housing to better weather-proof our outdoor sound equipment (amplifier and subwoofer);
• Finally making a top and back for the 'deck box' I created from the lower part/cabinet of our old gas grill;
• Lots and lots of reading, all sorts of stuff;
• Miscellaneous yard cleanup;
• Garden tilling and preparation;
• Finally cleaning up and sorting out the debris pile from that time in 2013 when I took our our chimney;
• Cutting in a second outlet box in a better position along an existing EMT conduit run for the new freezer;
• Finally rerouting the drain plumbing from our kitchen sink across the basement to the main stack area; and
• Other deferred cleaning projects around the house.

I'm sure there's something I've missed in that list, and there are other projects on a soft 'to-do' list moving forward. But it's good to finally get through some of these projects. It has been especially rewarding that, save for a single trip to the local hardware store (totaling about $40 in parts), I did all of these projects with materials I already had on hand or otherwise repurposed.

I call that winning.

So go forth and make home improvements. Maybe you'll learn or hone a new skill along the way!

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