November 7, 2020 - Fantastic Vent Spruce Up and Vacuum Cleaner Connector Door Fail

Today I decided to take apart the Fantastic Vent in the kitchen of Marge and paint its parts because, being plastic like the AC vents, the parts had all yellowed. As I unscrewed the trim piece two corners broke off at the screw holes. This happens a lot with old plastic. I superglued them back on until I could reinforce them on the underside with JB Weld.  Here is a picture of one corner JB Welded. JB Weld is great for such things. It sets up hard as a rock and sticks well to plastic. I will smooth off the patch with my Dremel tool before reinstalling on the ceiling.

I also painted the fan screen. I had to cut a piece of cardboard round to put on it so only the rim would be painted, not the screen. Here is a picture. It came out great using flat white paint.

Here is a picture of the painted trim piece that transitions from the ceiling to the fan. I'm happy with how it looks as well flat white.

Here is a picture of the fan without the trim and screen on it. The plastic that is still up there has also yellowed. It will be a major project to pull the whole fan unit out and to remove the lift motor and switches in order to paint it. I'm leaving it as it is for now. If it bothers me too much I'll pull it apart sometime and paint it.

I cleaned the plastic and the fan blades so the trim and screen can be reinstalled tomorrow when the paint is dry on those pieces.

I then proceeded to vacuum the rig, mostly to get up the dead beetles on the floor, etc. Marge has a central vacuum so I plugged it in and got to work. When I finished I pulled the hose from the wall connector and here is what happened.

The part that attached the outlet door to the wall outlet literally disintegrated. Pieces just fell off everywhere. A year or two ago the outlet door cracked and I glued a piece of wood on it. Here is a picture of the front of the door with that patch.

There is no way to fix this door now. I got online and ordered a new outlet door. It will be here in about a week. Easy enough to install right?  Wrong!!! When the door broke the last time I learned that to attach the door I have to pull the entire outlet out from the backside of the wall. That means that I have to take everything out of the front storage compartment and remove the back wall inside the compartment to access it. A real pain because the compartment is totally loaded for the trip to Florida. 

When the hose connector door is lifted (or now off) the vacuum runs. I can pull the plug on the vacuum to stop that and deal with it later but I have the time and tools now to repair it before we leave. The new connector door will be here in about a week. I will just need a nice day when I can unload everything on to the driveway. It will take twice as long to unload and load everything as it will to install the new part. I hate plastic parts.