We’ve all been inundated with the bad news from the housing industry: Home sales are down. Foreclosures are up. Housing prices are dropping or are stagnant. Home builders are going out of business.

It’s depressing. I know.

So how about a small piece of good news? Here it is: According to the National Association of Home Builders, home remodeling work remained steady in the first quarter of this year.

Of course, this news isn’t all stellar. The amount of remodeling work is still down from the days of the real estate boom. And economists with the home builders’ association say they don’t expect remodeling to begin bouncing back to pre-slump days until a gradual recovery begins in 2009.

Still, the remodeling industry is providing some boost to a very weak home building business. For that, at least, we should be grateful … at least a little bit.

There’s a positive side to everything, right? Sara Lin, a writer for the The Wall Street Journal’s online edition, found something good about the current housing slump: It’s easier, and cheaper, to find contractors to either build a house or renovate one.

You can read Lin’s story here. Basically, she writes that the housing slump has pushed down prices on lumber, drywall, labor and design fees. Carpenters, landscapers and general contractors are no longer busy, and are looking for work. Architects are agreeing to small projects that they would never have considered during the height of the residential housing boom.

Lin writes that some people in the building industry are even advertising their services on construction sites.

It’s a far cry from just two years ago. I remember trying to find a contractor willing to renovate a bathroom in our previous home. Talk about Mission Impossible! It wasn’t a big enough project for most contractors to touch. Those that were slightly interested told me I’d have to wait six to nine months before they’d be available.

We finally did find someone, after several weeks of phone calls, and he did a great job. Today, though, I could probably find a contractor willing to take on a bathroom renovation in just two to three phone calls.

Oh, how times have changed.

Yes, home sales are down. Builders are slowing their pace.  Mortgage lenders are hunting for business.

But there is one sector of the real estate industry that is holding steady: Homeowners are still tackling remodeling projects.

The Remodeling Market Index put out by the National Association of Home Builders showed that residential remodeling activity increased slighly during the third quarter of this year. Remodeling activity isn’t as strong now as it was during the residential housing boom, of course, but sometimes you have to take your good news when you can find it.

The index this quarter included a in-depth look at the type of outdoor remodeling jobs favored by homeowners. It shows some interesting things. The most popular outdoor remodeling projects in the third quarter were deck jobs, with 52 percent of homebuilders responding to an association survey reporting that they worked on one during the quarter. Other popular outdoor projects included adding porches, which 35 percent of builders said they tackled during the quarter, and building new patios, a project that 25 percent of builders said they took on in the third quarter.

A total of 31 percent of respondents reported that outdoor remodeling work had increased in 2007 compared to the previous year. Of course, that means that more than 60 percent reported that the amount of this work didn’t increase in 2007. But why focus on the negatives, right? There’s enough bad news in the residential housing market already.