Make Me Lose Control

Well, gentle readers, after yesterday's inspection, I'm down two more tomatoes and a bathtub drain. I'm really trying not to lose it with all of this invasion of my space.

I noticed yesterday when I got home that my bathtub upstairs was full of dirt and gunk that wasn't there before. I just figured someone stepped in to look at something while wearing shoes. This morning, I turned the shower on and when I went to get in, I noticed that it wasn't draining at all and I had about an inch of gross dirty water standing in there. I thought that maybe they checked the drain and that it had gotten clogged (it was fine yesterday morning), so I got the plunger and gently tried to fix it. Once it drained, I poured some Drano in and went downstairs to take a shower. According to the directions, I was supposed to wait for 30 minutes and then run hot water down the drain. When I did, it still wouldn't drain and I noticed that the drain stopper had been pushed down.

I felt like an idiot that I had gone through all of this when I just needed to pull the drain control up. However, when I did so, the entire knob came off in my hand. I no longer felt like an idiot, I was annoyed that they broke my drain. Granted, it may not have been in the best shape to begin with, but I have never had a problem with it (I don't use that faucet often anyway, I use the other one) and I certainly did not leave the tub in that shape yesterday when I left the house.

After conferring with Father of Ken, I successfully extricated the broken parts of the assembly, put it into a plastic bag, and headed for the hardware store. Please excuse the filth in these photos--my bathtub usually doesn't look this awful.

I found the replacement parts without incident and brought them home:

I'll spare you the details of how I put it back together and simply say that I may soon be moonlighting as a plumber. Look at this:

A thing of beauty. Now my drain works and I can clean the Inspection Filth from the tub. Thank God.