Quarantine Productivity: Hobbies and House Projects

I knew during quarantine that I needed to keep busy, and I knew that I wanted to do more things that would distract me from stress, anxiety and life's issues. As I blogged about earlier I renewed my car hobby and started pushing on work getting done to finish my Datsun 280z (more on that soon), collecting Hot Wheels and just working around the house. Plus I wanted more meaningful time with the kids, so I grabbed dudeman (Cruz) and said lets remodel the basement!

So what was once just storage, then storage plus weight bench, then storage, weight bench, workshop and spare TV room... got cleaned up. It meant a few background things, we needed to organize our storage area, so more storage could fit there (we had a successful quarantine garage sale) and do some needed repair work to make the basement more "finished". When we bought the house is was partially finished and while I am sure it would still be labeled that, it is slightly more now.

What started it all was that I wanted to replace the floor tiles. They were chipped and coming up, and I found some garage/basement floor tiles I thought would be quick and easy. Well you know nothing worth doing is quick and easy... and in my typical, "If you give a mouse a cookie" style the floor turned into painting walls, fixing some ceiling tiles, and then totally redecorating the room. I wanted to do it on a budget and so it was a lot of repurposed furniture, some resale finds, and painting things to match my theme.

Cruz loves to learn and work with me. He helped me clean and sand things, solved problems, measured, worked on his math, and gave ideas on things to decorate. Reminded me of N at his age, she loved projects and helping me work on my cars or the house. M is a tad too young to be helpful, and she didn't want to help anyways so we both won... ha.

So what all did we do? Well we painted, including an old wood paneled wall. We ripped up tile, sealed the floor, and put in some snap tile designed for garages. We ended up doing about 2/3s of the basement not just the new "Car Cave" as Cruz dubbed the space.

Paint... the walls were yellow, yes like canary yellow. We patched a little, and decided to paint most of the room white but to do the wood paneled wall in grey and part of one partial wall to color block the space. A dark red accent color we did on the registers and it tied into all the art well and we carried it over to other parts of the room.

Art... I bought a couple big frames, but mostly grabbed used frames we had in the house and art I either had already had or things I got for Cruz's room we ended up not using. I spent the most on the cool Datsun print that I put over the futon.

Furniture... the futon was the bottom of my college bunk/loft. It needed a mattress and Cruz helped me custom make some arm rests for it (he painted them red). I had a pair of ugly green vinyl chairs I bought years ago, finally took them out, dyed the chairs grey (N picked that over black which was my idea, she was right) and polished the chrome on them. I then scored a used wooden display shelf that had a clock on it. I took the clock out, mounted the license plate from my last race car and painted the shelf black... it now houses a few Datsun model cars.

Hot Wheels... to display my expanded hobby I made Hot Wheels some of the accents around the room. I custom made some shelves for loose cars and got a collector display. Interestingly all three kids have really gotten into collecting so that turned into some side fun as part of this as well.

Rims... not finished yet but I have always wanted to make some furniture out of rims. I have three wheels off my NX2000, the first car I autocrossed. I am testing some ideas on how to make them into end tables, and working on an idea for spare wheels I got to be a coffee table. More on that in the future... but the one table is there for now.

I put in a bunch of all of my favorite car things... racing, Nissans/Datsun, MOMO, some trophies, Hot Wheels, and a couple collages of racing pics with my dad and other family and friends (Team PLP!) who attended events.

Finally as the project finished I celebrated the completion with a car themed movie night... no one else wanted to watch, but dudeman and I watched Ford vs. Ferrari (we both give it a thumbs up), ate popcorn and then I gave him his own GT40... a Hot Wheels GT40.

More pictures on my Facebook Page. https://www.facebook.com/cruceno21/media_set?set=a.10100584889174563&type=3

Quarantine Reflection: Personal Changes - Part 1

We know a lot of things have changed under quarantine, and many things will never be the same. Some things we will wish could go back, and many we will be glad have changed. Whether it is the #BlackLivesMatter movement, how we shop, how/where we work... it will be a brave new world when this is all over. Things will change if we make them, so now is the time.

During my quarantine reflections I have thought a lot about who I am, what I am doing, why I do it, and more importantly what I should do differently. I honestly got really depressed earlier this year about my life/work balance, and quarantine at first made it worse, and then clarity came. Talking to a counselor made me realize I need to do things to work on me. I started thinking on some personal changes I could do to make me the better version of me that I know I can be... well here in a few blogs I will discuss those. It is all still changing but basically here is my list and my first blog discussion (ideally a blog on each coming as I have time). 

My main changes (so far): 

More Family Focus - quarantine allowed me to see just how much I was missing of my kids and how much more time I want to have with them. I need time focused on them, and less time when I fit them around work. I can fit work around them, and still be good at my work. 

Enjoy My Age - From what I drive to my schedule, I feel like I needed to upgrade to being in my 40s. Most of my friend group is younger, and I still travel and work with college students... but I can't drive small sporty cars forever (well not daily) and my body needs more sleep. So I bought a grown up car (blog on that adventure soon) and am working on my schedule post quarantine. 

Get Back to Hobbies - I wrote about this HERE already. It's been nearly a month since I wrote that, my Datsun Z is nearly ready to roll for the summer, my basement "Car Cave" as Cruz called it is pretty much done (before/after pics coming soon), and I am enjoying Hot Wheels and all three kids are enjoying it with me. I needed something else besides work to do in my spare time, and this has made a big different for me. 

Break From Beer - A year ago I went 30 days without alcohol for final training for my triathlon. I lost weight, felt better, and for my first tri turned a decent time for an old guy. I hatched an idea for an ultra multi-day protest run and I thought might as well train during quarantine. What I planned as a 30 day alcohol drought turned into 60, then 90 and now who knows... even with quarantine lifted I am sticking to it. So here is my first of a longer reflection. 

I am sure anyone has thought, man what if I didn't drink? Impossible right? Maybe not. 

Some of my favorite memories were times that included alcohol. Fun college nights, celebration events, graduations, reunions, or even just a beer with my dad on the patio. It's what you do to mingle, to see friends, to network, it's a core part of daily life. Why avoid it? 

Some of the times I wish I could do over, included alcohol, or were maybe because of alcohol. However, would avoiding alcohol cause the change? Not exclusively not, so why avoid it? 

Family will still be Brew Werks regulars! 

If I cut out alcohol, could I still do all the cool things I normally enjoy with alcohol? I think that is part of what held me back in the past from trying to make the decision. Everyone knows I love the Brew Werks, is it only cause of the beer? No, I remember the month I was training I still went a lot, but didn't have beer. I could do it again for 30 days, but longer? I did it in quarantine, could I do afterwards? 

People know I like a challenge, I like doing things that are hard, so here we go. I am not sure how long I want it to last, so far it's not felt impossible. It's been easier in quarantine, but even when Brew Werks opened up I just told the staff I wasn't drinking, and the ice teas kept getting refilled with no questions. 

So if you see me out, I will probably still buy you a beer, but don't need to buy me one. I'll take an ice tea, unsweetened please (still training for a potential run), and more than happy to talk work, life or whatever without a beer in my hand. 

Thanks to everyone who will help me make this commitment last.