Jayaruh's Blog

Friday, October 18, 2013

New Blade Bank

Original Blade Bank

A while back I made a blade bank out of an old Noxzema cream jar. It was a little small, so I was on the look for a similar jar but a little bigger. Well, I found one (a nasty smelling hand cream), and now I have a new blade bank. The first blade to go into the bank is the government shutdown blade. I started shaving with it on October 1, the first day of the government shutdown. I shaved every day with it until the end of the shutdown, October 17. It was a good blade.

New Blade Bank

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

New Faucets

Eventually, I want to raise the counter top three inches and replace it with new sinks and counter top. However, today, I took a small step towards that goal. I replaced the original faucets with new ones. This small upgrade has made a difference in appearance already. New counter top and sinks will cost about $400. Hopefully, I may get that done before Christmas. We will see.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Blade Safe/Bank

I created this blade safe from a Noxzema cream jar. The blade on the top represents the Shark Super Chrome that I got 21 shaves from. Now I have a place to put my DE blades as they are retired.

Friday, August 16, 2013

The Hole

The guys from Pike Electrical Contractors showed up about 8:30 Wednesday morning. We had a power outage about a week ago, and they were here to fix it. They hooked up a machine that sent a 20,000 volt pulse through the line to find where the problem was. I have no idea how this works, but they stood in our front yard and marked a spot with spray paint. They unloaded a small digging machine and began to dig.

They found the line and cut it and then spliced it back together. I think that the insulation had been breached somehow. The splice, along with the sleeve, was the cure. The two men worked well as a team, and finished up in about an hour and a half.

This is the machine that sent the pulse.

Finishing up.

Loading up

Getting ready to leave.

They returned about thirty minutes later with seed and hay to reseed the area. They did a fine job.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Bird Nest Relocation

These birds (house finches) tried to build a nest in the middle of our carport. Click here for more information. It kept falling down, so I bent the edges of a license plate and set it where they were trying to build, and they were successful in building the nest and raising a family of baby birds.

After they flew off, I took the nest and plate down and cleaned everything up.

This week, a couple of finches returned and were trying to build a nest next to the house again. Marcia wanted me to block these two places where birds had built nests in the past and discourage these birds from building there because of the constant falling down of nesting onto the carport and car. She suggested a free-standing birdhouse, but I decided to do this instead. Marcia loves the birds, not the mess.

Next to the house

Center of the carport

I built boxes that extended from the 6x6 to the roof. Then, the birds came back and saw that their "home site" had been blocked. They seemed very frustrated, so eventually they moved to the other end of the carport to try to build their nest there. But, there was not enough room, and the nesting material kept falling down. Therefore, I decided to have mercy on these sweet little birds, and I installed the license plate to give them more room.

Nesting material

Ledge too small to accommodate a nest. It kept falling down.

License plate gives additional room for the nest.

View from bottom

Momma bird approves of the addition.

We went to eat and returned about an hour later to see that the little birds had been able to add a significant amount of material to their nest in that short period of time. I will be documenting their progress with more pictures. So, bookmark this page and check back every week or so if you would like to follow along.