Photography by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades
Diane Fredericks’ first inkling that the plumbers had royally botched the job on her bathroom came when one rushed out of her two-bedroom apartment and ran back in with a fire extinguisher.
For more than two months, as her bathtub faucet didn’t work, Fredericks, 78, had used water from the bathroom sink to take sponge baths. She’d complained repeatedly to the managers of her apartment building, a 24-unit, four-floor complex at 1464 La Playa St., just across the street from Sunset Dunes in the Outer Sunset. Eventually, they sent plumbers, who simply sprayed WD-40 on the faucet knobs, failing to fix the problem. Several weeks later, on Jan. 20, the same company sent two plumbers to try again…