My New Career: Plumbing

I've seen the light: if this church thing doesn't work out I'm going into plumbing.

My wife and I decided to put a dishwasher in our kitchen to sterilize stuff for little James. Thousands of children are dying from dirty water every day; but God forbid my son ingest a germ.

This seemingly simple decision touched off a deluge of bewildering complications. Because our New York City apartment's kitchen isn't... how do you say... "spacious," in order to install the dishwasher, we have to move our sink. In order to move the sink, however, we have to add on more countertop. So now, our "little" appliance addition has morphed into a majorly minor kitchen renovation.

Picking out an 18" dishwasher was no prob. Choosing a sink was a bit more vexing ("almond" or "biscuit"--I missed color matching in seminary). Picking out a countertop and a fabricator was a bit of a hassle, but we found a great outfit in Queens to do it. No, by far the biggest challenge has been to find a plumber. The job isn't a big one--this is, ironically, the source of our problem. A few plumbers have said straight-up "the job's too small, we don't need it." A few other plumbers have made it into a big job by inflating their estimates and including unnecessary work in their proposals in order to justify their own effort.

Why not just find a handyman and skip the licensed plumber entirely? One plumber told me as much--he called this "a classic brother-in-law job." We can't go the budget route, though, because we live in a co-op. A co-op is entirely cool in concept (shared ownership... very Christian!), but when it comes to home repairs, in effect a co-op means that your neighbors have a lot more say over what you can and can't do in your own apartment than you wish they did! Our co-op board has rigorous standards for repairs. That's great because it protects the mutual investment of the co-op owners against shoddy workmanship. But for us, meeting the co-op's standards (permits, architectural renderings--for a dishwasher installation!, licensed and bonded contractors) has turned our little idea of keeping James from getting germy into a thoroughly toxic process. I feel like I need to be sterilized....

We finally found a plumber today who is licensed and bonded, will get the required permits, and was courteous and professional. Big ups to Brian at Mulligan Plumbing! My only regret is that I couldn't bargain him down any more. He insisted on taking my first born son. What--and for whom--will we sterilize?