I find myself using the adapter and facade patterns a lot when refactoring existing code. I know how I want it to work and I know how it works now but I don't have time right now to fix it so I add an adapter or facade to give it a clean interface and I only change the underlying code if I need to make significant changes to the underlying implementation.
Adapter: Converts the interface of a class into another interface the clients expect. Adapter lets classes work together that couldn't otherwise because of incompatible interfaces.
Compiled C modules in Python could be seen as examples of the adapter pattern: the Python implementation provides an interface for python code to work with the incompatible underlying C code.
Façade: Provides a unified interface to a set of interfaces in a subsystem. Façade defines a higher-level interface that makes the subsystem easier to use.
The pathlib Python library provides a simplified high-level cross-platform interface to methods and attributes from the os, sys, io and other modules.