It comes in threes, right?

Okay, I've got yet another home-related repair on deck. I'm counting the $900 I spent on my car a couple of weeks ago as a home-related repair, mostly because...well...the car lives in the garage.

First it was the washer, then the car, and now my back door. I tried to shut the door the other night, and it closed, but it wouldn't lock. I started looking at the locking mechanism trying to see how it's supposed to work and why it wouldn't anymore, and I could see where a screw had either broken or come loose or something, and that seemed to have caused another part to not be in place, which in turn prevented the lock from moving into position.

I decided to see if I could fix it, which is always a great idea when it's late and you're tired. Sure enough, when I took it all apart, two parts fell down inside the door, never to be seen again. Fantastic.

So, yesterday I went to Lowe's and talked to the Lowe's Door Guy and we decided I could probably fix it myself (he said I seem like I'm "creative," which is not the same as being "handy," and I think you need to be "handy" to fix things, but maybe he sensed that if I screwed it up, I'd curse creatively and blog about it and he wanted to encourage that). I bought a new lock, which is actually better than my old one, because it has a handle instead of trying to cram your fingers into a little recessed box to pull the door open and shut. And he showed me how to take the door off of its tracks in case I needed to do that.

After owning a home for 5 years now, I recognize that what took him 10 seconds will likely take me 2 hours and lot of f-bombs, so I'm going to try not to take it off the tracks and just fix it in place. I appreciate his confidence that in the event I got the door down, I could actually get it back up again, but if that can at all be avoided, that'd be supah.

So, wish me luck that in the process of fixing the lock, I don't destroy something else. And cross you fingers for me that this is it on the repair front for a while. I'm ready to spend both my time and money on other pursuits.