Guest Blog: Vacuum Fix.

How many broken vacuums do you have? We discovered one in our garage, and my girlfriend took it upon herself to handywoman it. Here's her story:


Vacuum cleaners, like office chairs in a college environment, tend to have a short life span. Even the smartest bag-less that boasts 12 amps and has a washable filter isn’t invincible to the demands of a collegiate household.

Recently, I was perusing the shop outside the house, which is home to a random assortment of dilapidated washing machines, office chairs and furniture that we inherited upon moving into our house and I saw a black vacuum, standing neatly against the wall.

Upon first inspection, the vacuum looked fairly new, just a little dusty. So I plugged it in, and tried to vacuum some dirt, but realized not only was the vacuum not sucking, it was blowing! I flipped it upside-down and examined what might be the problem, and noticed a large buildup of hair and lint behind the brushes.

I traced where a tube, leading to the bag-less dirt chamber, connected to the underside of the vacuum, and realized there was major clogage. I unscrewed a screw that was holding the tube in a curve, and was able to shove a long metal skewer (mmm anyone want to BBQ?), through the tube, unearthing about 4 solid inches of sawdust, hair clippings and lint. I put all the pieces back together, plugged it in, and viola, it sucked in a good way.

TOOLS NEEDED
-multi tool or drill

-skewer or plumberesque tool

Refrigerator Update... Yikes Again.

I'm a day late on this post, but here it is.

A couple hours after turning off the fridge, we started cleaning it. I was working on the top freezer portion, when I came across this mysterious panel attached to the bottom. It was attached by two screws on either side. I could tell it was dirty under there, and when pushing down on it I could feel ice give way. I had to see more...



I grabbed my trusty screwdriver and went to work. My heart rate grew as the screws twisted out. I have a bit of a fear of mold; it grosses me out. I cautiously lifted the panel off, and BAM! Mold and other general frozen grossness!

Well, I survived the cleaning with some help from the roomies. Under the panel, I found a vent of sorts that leads into the fridge section. The vent was blocked by solid ice. I think it's safe to say this was the root of the problem. A day later, the whole thing works fine again. The freezer isn't too cold, and the fridge isn't too warm. Problem solved.

Edit: 4-10-08.
If you think this is gross, check back this weekend when I take on my next project...

Refrigerator Defrosting... Yikes.

So this isn't really a project. It's more of a spur of the moment type thing. The freezer part of our refrigerator was waaay too cold, while the fridge part wasn't cold enough. We didn't really know what to do, so we figured we might as well try defrosting the whole thing and starting fresh. This was also a great opportunity to do some cleaning. Needless to say, there were some nasty things in there.

We threw all the freezer items in a large cooler. The rest either went in the trash, or into one of four mini-fridges we have in the house. This picture is from about halfway through the process. You can see that it could use a good cleaning.

I think doing at least one fridge cleaning like this is a pretty good idea. It's too soon to say if it will fix the temperature problem, but at least we'll have a clean fridge. It will certainly make cleaning at the end of the year a lot easier.

Gross item awards:
1. Partially separated mayonnaise.
2. Old packets of deli meat.
3. Five jars of old pickles.