The look on his face when I told him that number!

Okay, there’s a plumber I like, Lee, good guy, a one-man show, been doing this a long time, knows his stuff, but he wasn’t available last time I needed one.

I thought about calling the company of the young guy who had come in order to ask him to, y’know, fix his mistake, if it was his mistake, but I just couldn’t. $850 and I’m still dealing with all this and my carpet’s been wrecked and the sunk-cost fallacy was becoming a little too literal.

It must have kept bugging Lee, because when he was done he felt compelled to talk about it.

I thought the other guy had said he’d replaced everything under the sink but the faucet. Turns out he had not. The two on-off switches were very old and they had failed.

I could attest to that–I’d tried one more time last night to see if I could get them to close and the result was that that five gallon pot couldn’t manage that much overnight. The floor of the cabinet was at last starting to dip heavily downwards and the edge of the carpet in the living room was wet again.

Yeah, he said, they forgot to put a washer in. That’s why it still leaked. That part? he said, pointing to the U-tube. Costs $16 and an hour of his time at most to put in. Then he explained, That company got sold about two years ago and the new owners are pushing their people hard for upsells.

Ah–so that’s why the guy waited for his friend to come over to get me a quote on how he was going to fix the damage to the cabinet floor and the wall behind it. (As I suddenly realized I was apparently paying the first plumber per hour for that, too.) I told Lee, I wasn’t feeling it. Didn’t agree to going forward with it.

He spelled out his own bill: $50 and $22 and $8 for these parts, $80/hour for his time, to say, And THAT is how it’s done.

Nothing drips.

Everything works.

The new faucet looks gorgeous. (Richard laughed when I said that to him. I said, It’s not what you would have picked? He said, No, but it makes you happy and that’s what I want. He is a sweetheart.)

The refrigerator line is hooked up again.

Next time Lee’s too busy I am absolutely going to wait till he’s not.