Tuesday: Plumber comes, fixes the leak coming from the overflow drain, and also takes off the hot and cold faucets of the tub for reasons I'm not exactly clear about. Says he can save me a bunch of labor charges ($95/hour) if I put the faucets back together myself. "Just bring these parts over to Pete the Friendly Plumbing Supply Guy, and he'll fix you right up with new stems and knobs, add a little caulk, and bingo! Piece of cake."

Contractor stops by to inspect the damage downstairs. Asks to borrow my hammer. Smashes the crap out of the walls, which are also soaked. While he's there, three big guys show up with three big pieces of equipment to dry everything out. Inexplicably, all three are named Jo-Jo.

Upstairs, meanwhile, I insert the new stem I bought for $38 into the faucet holes, and the cheap plastic end promptly fall apart into three distinct pieces vaguely reminiscent of Legos, but with no obvious snap-together bits. I take it back to Pete the Less-Friendly Plumbing Supply Guy. He doesn't have a clue how to put it back together, and won't exchange it. Another customer standing at the counter puts it back together. I take it home, insert it gently and carefully into the hole, and it falls apart. I give up, call the plumber and he sends a new guy over who is a dead ringer for Christopher Lloyd in Back To The Future, a hard-of-hearing, old, mad-scientist-type with wild Einstein hair, who can't thread the stem in the hole. He believes I was sold the wrong stem, so takes me with him back to Pete the Obstinate Plumbing Supply Guy, who says it's the right stem, and the only stem, and won't exchange it. Pete's son mentions in passing that he has had more problems and complaints from plumbers about this particular part than any other item in the shop. Einstein and I return to my house and he still can't get it to work so he goes home. Upstairs bathroom is filled with stems, knobs, and various unidentifiable little metal things and plastic pieces.

I rarely drink. I have a gin and orange juice, then a Heineken, and fall asleep in the chair.

Wednesday: Plumbing company sends in a brand new, ace two-man team. They insert the stems into the holes and they fall apart. They put them back together and try again. They repeat this procedure 17 times, like a rat in a maze going down the same tunnel over and over again and finding no cheese. They finally decide the stem is defective, and go back to Pete The Really Lousy Plumbing Supply Guy. I go with them. Pete says the stem is fine, won't take it back. While I'm there, I try to exchange the ugly plexiglass knobs he sold me yesterday that my wife hates, since all the other knobs in the bathroom are steel, but he says those are the only knobs on the face of the earth that will work with those stems, which are the only stems on the face of the earth that will work with our tub. He offers to "n-word-rig" a steel knob, but insists it's the wrong way to do it.

We all return to my house, already about three hours into the job. Re-read above paragraph to learn what happens next. Except on our next visit to Pete, the plumber springs for a new stem, brings it home, inserts it into the hole, and it falls apart into three pieces. The plumber runs out of ideas and calls his boss. His boss says he'll send over the original "piece-of-cake" guy.

Rather than take my own life, I decide to see if I can at least get a blog out of all this. You're reading it.

Piece-of-cake guy is back. Tells me he should have finished the job himself from the start. I agree wholeheartedly. He can't get the stems to work, breaks the brand new one, can't believe they cost $38 a pop and I've been through three already, plus, he says Pete sold me some new cheap plastic-tipped replacement part, and not the same thing he sent me in there with. He calls Pete the Unbelievably Stinky Plumbing Supply Guy who tells him the stems are perfect and he's just not doing it right. Piece-of-cake says, "Then you come over here and show me. We've had three guys try." Pete won't come, and adds that he "ain't eatin' the three stems neither." I should have been suspicious when I saw that the stems come with rubber bands holding the ends on; you know, those ends that break into three pieces as soon as you try to put them in the wall?

Piece-of-cake goes to a downtown store that still sells parts for old houses and finds duplicates of the original stems for $18 each. Gets them in, turns them on, no water comes out. As I write this, he's upstairs with a blowtorch and soldering iron in the eaves behind the tub, blasting off and replacing the shut-off valves, which have never been a problem until today. We're into hour eight, plus the three hours on Tuesday morning and the two last night. Do the math. No, don't. I'm not. I keep thinking about that Tom Hanks movie, The Money Pit.

We find out that our Homeowner's Insurance doesn't cover plumbing, only the damage that plumbing problems can cause. But our Home Warranty, thank you Jesus, does cover plumbing. Hallelujah! Oh, that's right, we decided LAST WEEK not to renew our home warranty. Ha-ha-ha-ha! How funny is that? I want to go snorkeling in the Grand Cayman's. My left hip is killing me. The cortisone shot didn't do a thing. I could use a shower.

Piece-of-cake guy still can't get water to come out of the faucets. Decides there must be something clogged somewhere. There didn't use to be. Not having water coming out was never one of our problems. He brings in an air compressor to blow out the line, but to do that, he has to remove the showerhead. It breaks off, and he spends 45 minutes trying to clear out the hole in the wall where the showerhead used to be connected.

I was a renter my whole life until age 54. The most I ever paid was $500/month, but usually found great places to live for $150. When it was time to move, everyone said, "Buy, buy, don't rent, don't rent, equity, equity." I still don't quite grasp why paying $1700 mortgage payments is better than paying $500 rent. If you stop paying either one, either the landlord evicts you or the bank evicts you. Yeah, but now I OWN my own home. So I pay for the plumbing repairs. Now I get it. 

P.S. Thirty hours and 5 plumbers later, I just took a shower.