My wife (who is agonizingly, slowly learning a lesson about proper following distance), get in a minor fender bender. She rear ended some car in heavy traffic, not too fast thankfully. There was hardly any damage to the car, and luckily the other guy is being totally cool about not needing any repairs. There were a couple scratches that I'm sure a body shop would charge hundreds of dollars to repair, so we're getting off easy on that one.

Our brick, however, is slightly worse for the wear. Although it could have been much, much worse. Thankfully there is no damage to any of the sheet metal, and the alignment doesn't seem to have been affected. The front bumper seems to have been knocked in a little, so that the grill is cracked on one side, which is not a problem. The concern is that the front end got crunched ever so slightly so that now the hood doesn't shut all of the way. It is fitting loose, and doesn't go down to the second click. The hood seems OK to drive for now without a danger of blowing up at highway speeds. I tried to yank it up with a lot of force and it doesn't seem to be in danger of coming loose. But I know it's not a permanent situation. This needs to be fixed before we take it out of town.

I have very little experience with body repairs. Is this a job that I can do somehow myself, adjusting the front bumper in some way? Or is this a job for a shop, that hopefully will not charge me too much?