Plumbing is my least favorite home improvement task. Today I tried to repair the drain in my mom's front bathroom. The pop-up wouldn't go up and down. Based on this and all my previous plumbing experience, I have come up with John's Rule of Plumbing: All plumbing work takes three trips:

• Trip 1: Get the parts.
• Trip 2: Get the right parts.
• Trip 3: Get the parts you forgot in trip 2.

Oh, and at the end of this I should add the optional trip 4 to replace the parts from trips 2 and 3 that are defective out of the package.

Have I mentioned that plumbing is my least favorite home improvement task?