With many large companies asking their staff to work remotely, many are now spending both their work hours and their free hours at home. With some school age children also learning from home, homes have become a busy place. People want and need a space where they can focus on work or school without distraction, and everybody working at the dining room table simply won’t do.
Due to this, formal dining rooms, bonus rooms, or spare bedrooms are being converted to home offices. Even if a home had a den or home office to start, with both spouses working at home they both need space. Reframing the opening and adding doors to a bonus room or the formal dining room creates that space. With the doors left open the dining room can be reclaimed. With shelving, white boards, improved lighting, maybe a desk and chair ordered online from Wayfair or Ikea, consumers are setting up comfortable and practical places to work.
Some do this themselves and others are hiring help. Remodelers claim to be seeing more interest in kitchens and bathrooms as well. What was once a someday project has taken on greater urgency now that we’re in our homes 24 hours a day. Figuratively, if not literally.
So, while certain industries have been severely impacted, know that many home service companies are busy. If you have a few things you want done around the home prior to the year-end holidays, now is the time to be contacting service providers. In many cases they are busier now than in a ‘normal’ year, and thus normal lead times simply won’t work. It’s time to get your project on the schedule if you want it completed for the holidays.
I’d also like to use the above commentary to backup another point I make from time to time. Service industry jobs can be a great career choice for many. Fewer and fewer see a future for themselves as a plumber, carpenter, electrician or mechanic. While manufacturing concerns have shipped some jobs offshore and replaced other jobs with robots, the same is not happening in the trades. While technology is changing every industry, craftsmen are in high demand and wages are competitive. Like any profession, skills take time to develop, but there is a future for those willing to apply the effort, work and learn.
