I Can Do Anything (just not always on the first try)

You know how we're always telling you to do everything yourself?  Not to hire other people to do home improvement type stuff?  Well, it's true.  You can do pretty much anything that needs to be done around your house, and you should do it.

I consider myself to be a pretty self-sufficient kind of girl. True, I usually look to my husband for more major projects (tiling the bathroom, putting in retaining walls in the backyard) but that has to do with the time required as much as the skill or effort involved.  For smaller things (putting up blinds, putting together bunk beds, changing a tire) I am totally confident in my abilities, and I just grab whatever tool I think I need and jump in.

Sometimes, however, things don't quite go as planned.

Exhibit A: My dryer vent's outside cage.

What's that you say?  It's not supposed to be on the ground?  Yeah, I know.

My dryer wasn't drying as well as it's supposed to, and I could see that the screen on the outside of the wall was kind of caked in lint that had gathered there over the last few months, so I thought that I'd just click it off and clean it out.  You know, like I've done every couple of months since we moved here.  It's not tricky.  This time however, instead of the outside cage coming off with a click, all the (rusty) screws holding the whole thing broke off, and the construction caulking came unstuck from the wall. 

Don't look at me... I'm still not really sure what went wrong.
All I know is that this is what it looked like for a few days, until I could get to the store to buy some more caulking.

Moral of the story: sometimes things don't work out the way you were expecting to.  Be prepared for an extra trip to the hardware store!

Kate