Up A Pay Grade ... $$$

All my plans seem to change by the day.  It was a lovely suffocating convection-oven 105 degrees yesterday, not that I'm complaining!!  I still love it here.  Add on a few more degrees if you were in Tucson.  So wasn't I absolutely shocked to find out how cool it was under this RV cover.  Isn't she purdy??  The inside exhaust fan wasn't even on.

No, it's not mine.  It belongs to the Chance family who were kind enough to let me park my baby over there for the time they are gone.  Every little bit out of the sun helps.  It makes me want one even more.

So with the increase in heat, I stayed indoors and decided to up myself a pay grade to Mechanic.  They make lots more money than handymen (women).  See?  Even auto-correct wants to make it handymen!!  

This is my old vacuum ... relegated to the garage ... that I decided to bring to Arizona.  It's a Hoover Windtunnel, an excellent specimen of carpet cleaning.

Every time I used it, I could smell burning rubber and the sweeper refused to turn.  I could take it to the vacuum repair shop and pay $200 for an overhaul, but why not do it myself?  It can't be that hard!!

Thank goodness for You Tube.  I really didn't expect to see a video on how to fix this problem.  After all, just how many vacuums are out there?   Thank you to all the men who spend hours teaching the rest of us how to save money.  This video was actually made by a vacuum repair company and lucky me, it was the exact same model.  They said I needed new belts, which I ordered from Amazon.

Step one, turn it over and take out four screws.  Step two, remove the old belts.  That was harder than it sounded, requiring a pair of scissors.

The second one hung on for dear life before I got it dislocated.  After thirty minutes of trying to stretch a very short belt around a very big wheel, I GOT IT!!!  Yay!!  Well that was an easy fix!

Now for the big test.  Does it work??  Heck yeah!!!  This thing almost sucked the carpet up off the floor.  Unfortunately the self propelled part doesn't seem to be working all that great (that was the second belt) but everything else is working like a charm.  

I'm upping my pay grade.  You can now address me as Ms. Mechanic instead of Handywoman.  I'm off to clean the rest of the house.  

I had actually planned a trip out to a ghost town near Tombstone, but it's going to be another 105 degree day, so I'm staying inside where it's cool.  With my luck I'd get a flat tire and die of exposure.  Maybe I should look up "changing tires" on You Tube!!!