Reality has finally hit us big time as we round the corner towards March and springtime... if we don't get cracking on ordering all of our appliances, etc, they won't be able to properly rough in the plumbing and electrical, which means the house justs sits there looking like a wooden shell late into the season, and we continue to pay a mortgage for a place we cannot use. So we got to work, measuring the bathroom and the kitchen for the thousandth time (see above) and spending hours on line trolling various sites searching for the perfect stuff.

And there, shining in the darkness, was the shower of our dreams.

Made by Barber Wilson, an English company that we'd only encountered when browsing the priciest spot for this stuff in the Hamptons,  exquisitely simple in design, the kind of plumbing Royal Families have probably had in their summer palaces for generations. Plus it was on sale (Presidents' Day, of course) at Insidestore.com, one of my new favorite destinations on the world wide web. Deadline was midnight Sunday night, so we held our breath and placed the order.

It wasn't until the next day, while visiting a showroom in Manhattan, that we discovered that the shower we'd just blown our wad to get is not to code. One is no longer allowed to have just hot and cold valves, one now needs to have all sorts of complex things that ensure one's safety from accidental scalding. Nothing like splurging on something that you actually can't use. AAAAARGHHHH!!

click below to find out what happened next...