Friends, I was so hoping to reveal our beautiful new bathroom this week. Here’s where we’re at: tiling is 95% complete, with the exception of a backsplash. (Our vanity top is beautiful, and was the deal of the century! More on that soon.) Fixtures are mostly in — except what you see here. Which is turning into a serious headache.

See, way back long ago, in a chapter that we don’t much care to revisit, our contractor asked us to choose our shower and faucet fixtures. We looked at him with big, wide eyes — at the time, the entire bathroom was gutted down to the subfloor and studs. And we had no earthly clue what we wanted it to look like, eventually. All of our creative vision was focused on the kitchen and wood floors (and framing out a laundry room, and moving electrical outlets, and and and …). We were in a state of decision-making saturation, and couldn’t make even one more.

So, he fixed us up with a cheap faucet set — which he had to do, because he had to complete the plumbing work inside the walls — and they needed the install the valve that goes behind the tile. A little vocab lesson: the “valve” is where the water pipes connect to and deliver water to the bath (13 and 14, below, I’m pretty sure). The valve holds the “cartridge” (15, below) which protrudes through your shower wall, and into this your faucet handle is eventually fitted. Turn the handle to move the cartridge to open the valve, and you’ve got flowing water.

Fast forward a year: a custom vanity is built, the tile is set, and we finally choose our lovely fixtures — carefully selecting the same brand as the cheap (read: super ugly), previously installed model to ensure everything will work together. And … the new Delta faucet handle doesn’t match up to the installed Delta cartridge. At all.

Normally, when you update or upgrade your faucet handle, you can swap out the cartridge from the front — but not so, for us. Because the valve itself — the thing attached to the pipes inside the wall — won’t accommodate the newer cartridge that came with our new fixtures. Because the contractor-installed fixture set was discontinued in 2006. (Six years before we moved in, notice. Where this fixture came from, we have no idea.) And we can’t return the (expensive) fixtures, because we’ve already opened and mostly installed them.

The most reasonable path forward? Cut a hole (this is where my shoulders slump and I open a bottle of wine and try not to yell) through the freshly painted bedroom wall directly behind the shower, and replace the entire valve.

It’s one of those projects that creates another project. And believe me, with everything on our priority list, patching, texturing, and painting a drywall hole is going to fall wayyyyy at the bottom.

The spouse is on deck for this one, because we’re out of cash — Saturday promises drywall dust, scraped knuckles, and some cursing, most likely.

Fingers crossed — we are so ready for baths and comfortable showers in this house.