We don't have enough small home repair vikings....

I have officially joined the ranks of DIYers who say "no I've never done that before, but how hard can it be?"  and "oh yeah, you always get extra parts."

My vacuum has sounded like a jet engine for about.... well 2 years, probably.  You know, right after the warranty expired.  And Tuesday night the sound pitch got higher and higher and the motor turned slower and slower and it was smelling really hot.....
So I turned it off before it could explode.

Wednesday morning I pulled all the strings off the beater bar (it seriously was a huge pile of strings, you could've crocheted a small toy out of them) and cleaned all the filters.  When Mr. Curly came home he said "As long as you have it that far apart, you might as well take it all the way apart and clean the dirt off the fan blades to see if that helps."

My exact thoughts were "You want me to do what-huh?  Are you crazy? I don't take appliances apart.  That is YOUR job.  You love doing things like that!"  My response was "You want me to?  Uh, ok, I can do that."

During nap time, the vacuum came completely apart.  There was somehow less and yet more screws than I expected.  I did take out some I didn't need to, and in trying to get a casing apart, found two more I had missed.
I ran myself out of canned air, so Thursday morning I brought Mr. Curly's air compressor in from the garage to blow all the dirt out of the motor and fan blades (which also got scrubbed with a paint brush because that fine dust was REALLY caked on!).

And then I had to put it back together.  It took only 10 minutes and I had an extra screw (which I put into a slot that was missing a screw from a previous time I had to pull the beater bar off) and then came the test.

I pulled it to a less dusty area, plugged it in, turned it on and....
IT WORKS!!!  And it is SO much quieter I can't even believe it.

Now I just have to stop losing screws every time I pull it apart......


Post title from How To Train Your Dragon