Daily Archives: January 22, 2013

Bird Blind . . .

Once again, after walking a little over a mile around the park, we sat outside and enjoyed our coffee and the view.

Galveston Bay View Site 80

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Here’s Pinkie, our resident Roseate Spoonbill, along with some of the Ibises.

Pinkie and the Ibises

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And here’s Old Blue, the Great Blue Heron that hangs out around here.

Giant Blue Heron and Pinkie

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But after goofing off all morning, it was back to work. Today was the day to take a crack at restringing my blinds.

As it turns out, it’s not really hard, just kind of time-consuming. Here I’ve laid out the 4 parts in the order that they will be assembled.

Blind Repair 2

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My first task to measure out the two sets of strings I’ll be using.

The formula is:   Width + 1/2 Width + Height x 2 = length of string needed. Since this is a 4 string blind, two sets will be needed.

Blind Repair 3

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When I first took my blind apart I discovered it used two springs instead of just one like most stringing diagrams I had found.

But a little more research yielded this diagram.

Blind String Pattern

Next I took each string, folded it in half, and then looped it through each spring.

Blind Repair 4

Then using a stiff piece of wire as a needle, I threaded one string through the folded over ‘eye’ and taped it over.

Blind Repair 5

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Then following the diagram, I started threading the cord through the ‘night’ section of the blind.

Blind Repair 6

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Then I did the same thing with the lower ‘day’ section.

Blind Repair 7

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Here’s the blind laid out and completely strung.

Blind Repair 8

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Then all I had to do was slide the pieces together, and put the endcaps on. But since it was getting late, I decided to wait until tomorrow to rehang it.

Blind Repair 9

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While I was working on the blinds, Jan was removing every thing from one of our slide pantries, so I could repair several of the shelves that had broken due to too much weight.

Jan also used this chance to go through the contents and throw away any thing with expired dates.

Pantry 1

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A little judicious repair with some heavy duty zip ties fixed things up.

Pantry 2

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About 5:30 Jan and I headed up to Webster for dinner and some shopping. Dinner was Chili’s, and the shopping was Sam’s Club for prescriptions and Kroger’s for some groceries, and then it was home for the night.

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Thought for the Day:

The government should fear the citizens . . . not the other way around.

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