Christmas, the Holidays, and DIY
How To Combine Holiday Festivities with Routine Home Maintenance
Nov 19, 2007
Christmas, the Holidays, and DIY
Whether a DIY type person celebrates Christmas, Hanukkah, Wiccan Yule, Thanksgiving, or another Winter holiday, that doesn't mean those accumulating DIY projects have to fall by the wayside.
As a matter of fact, it's an excellent opportunity to kill the proverbial two birds with one stone! Read on to discover how to combine Christmas, the holidays, and DIY projects.
How exactly does this work? Think of it as kind of a spring cleaning kind of thing. Think positively; these are opportunities rather than chores. There are many small projects that have to be taken care of on a periodic basis. For example...
Christmas Lights
Chances are, as the weather turns brisk (or leaning towards brutal), DIY people are thinking about digging out the ladder and Christmas lights. As a matter of fact, this is a good time to think about converting to LED Christmas lights both for the outside of the house and to spice up the Christmas tree.
LED Christmas lights will pay for themselves quickly. Imagine, 70 lights per string and each string only consumes a measly 4 Watts! Not only that, but they last 50,000 hours! That's a lot of winter holidays.
And they're cool to the touch, so they minimize a Christmas tree fire. As a bonus, the reduced heat will make the tree stay fresh longer. Less heat equals less drying out.
Clean the Rain Gutters, Touch Up Paint
The leaves have fallen and the ladder is leaning against the house, ready for the annual Christmas light stringing. Isn't this a great opportunity to clean the rain gutters? And if a real spirit of enthusiasm strikes, how about installing rain gutter guards or gutter covers?
Another DIY maintenance project that comes to mind is touching up the fascia boards. This is a golden opportunity to chip, prime, and do a bit of exterior house painting.
Hanging the Mistletoe
Everyone loves to hang the mistletoe to encourage those sneaky kisses. While taking care of this preparation, why not examine the door trim or case opening trim? It could also use a bit of touch up painting or at least a bit of a scrub.
Mistletoe trivia - The word mistletoe comes from the Anglo-Saxon words, "mistel" (dung) and "tan" (twig). Hmmm, bring on the eggnog.
Another spot to examine while in the area is the wall surrounding the light switch cover plates. They're usually located right next to the trim for convenience. This area tends to get a bit smudgy over time because of walking by and flipping the lights on off. Once again, scrub, scrub.
If the switch itself is getting too wiggly, it probably needs to be replaced.
A DIY Menorah?
Why not? Any woodworker who observes Hanukkah by lighting the menorah candles is capable of designing and building a unique menorah that will become a family heirloom. What could be better than that? Of course, deciding which sibling inherits it might be a bit of a problem.
And in Conclusion...
This article by no means covers all the possibilities for incorporating DIY maintenance opportunities; individual traditions invite a mind-numbing number of possibilities. But the bottom line is that spare time can be optimized!
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