About DIY Home Improvement Plus

Les Donovan is the owner and author of DIY Home Improvement Plus. I am semi-retired and live in the lakes region of central New Hampshire following more than four decades in the aerospace industry. I have extensive home building experience having built numerous houses, garages, porches, finished basements, attic rooms as well as made extensive additions and repairs to houses. I built these houses and projects by myself and in some cases acted as a general contractor for some portions of the work. The projects included framing, plumbing, electric wiring, finish carpentry, masonry projects, sheet rocking, wall papering, and interior and exterior painting and landscaping.

My formal education has been in aerospace engineering / technology and management with undergraduate degrees from the University of New Hampshire, University of Maryland, a master’s degree from the Florida Institute of Technology and a near second master degree in economics from the University of Oklahoma. In addition, I am a licensed pilot and aircraft / power plant technician.

My wife and I have lived, worked, and traveled extensively throughout the world. By my wife’s count, we have lived in more than thirty different homes, most of which required some level of improvement. We now lived in the lakes region of our birth state of New Hampshire.

I have written many short stories and have one published, “The Hermit and The Woodchuck”. It is a brief satire of a hermit’s life living in southern New Hampshire during the last century who took in a woodchuck as a pet and taught it to speak and read English.  I also teach as an adjunct instructor at Southern New Hampshire University.