IMAGINE RUBE GOLDBERG CARRYING HIS INVENTION through a China shop and tripping over bull dung into a freshly laid row of dominos, falling in all directions, arms akimbo, crashing everything as the dominos topple. OK, perhaps it wasn’t that bad, but a lot of things broke around my house this month. It was a chain reaction of sorrow.

’Tis a sad coincidence that all these costly calamities came so close after our combined costs for Christmas counted up to a considerable accumulation. We were spent.

The buildup to the break-down was slow, but the crash was sudden. My problems began last spring with an innocent thing.

I noticed my furnace heater stopped working. I knew it would need servicing, but I waited until fall. Gino the builder would come in the fall. Maybe it’s just the thermostat. Maybe he will be able to fix it.

Meanwhile, our guest bathroom sink had been turned off since spring as well because of a small drip-drip leak. Gino turned it off and said, “Wait until I return in the fall. I’ll fix that.”

Gino was just here for a month. His visit ended last Thursday. He flew home to Philadelphia for Christmas to see his 93-year-old mother, Loretta.

Thank Old Man Christmas that Gino visits us every spring and fall and stays a month. He’s the MacGyver of home repair.

He was here this fall doing odd-job remodel work around the area, pretty busy every day, but he promised to help me do some deferred maintenance around here. By “help me,” I mean to say, “Do it for me while I watch from the background and hand him tools.”

We had a copper water pipe leading outside that needed to be stubbed off because some kid stood on it and bent it. We had an outlet with a fused prong from an electrical cord stuck in the slot in the family room. Some idiot like me plugged in a bad space heater.

Small jobs, all. Should take a day. That was the consensus. We jumped in on this growing Honey Do List.

I dealt with the furnace people. Gino dealt with the bathroom sink. He removed the faucet cartridge, and we drove to General Plumbing. They didn’t have the replacement. Couldn’t match it in their database. Sue admitted to purchasing it online at some Bingo Dingo website. We ordered a new faucet setup, two-day wait.

We started the other projects while we waited. When the wait was over, the old drain pipe broke while putting in the faucet. That started a whole new project. Here was that single day condensed: Oops. Back to Ace. Dang it. Back to Home Depot. Oh, shoot. Back to General Plumbing, and around and around.

In the midst of it all, the furnace guy handed me my first bill for $888. I wrote him a check, and after he left, I tried to turn on some music to cool the mood. Pop went my Harman Kardon receiver. Fried. No music in the house. I’m Bluetoothing it.

Gino cut a big hole in the sheet-rock wall behind my pinball machine to get to the bent pipe. He cut the copper and did a solder rerouting. I turned on the water main out in front of the house while he tested it.

“Turn it off! Turn it off!” he yelled to me from inside the house.

“Whoops.” The bent spigot was still shooting hot water into the yard and all the hot water faucets upstairs were off.

“I cut the wrong pipe,” he confessed. “I couldn’t see well.” He cut a new hole in a new wall in my downstairs bathroom, chasing this elusive copper pipe. He had to cut copper again, but first he had to cut a PVC vent pipe that was in front of the copper pipe.

We shut off the water main, opened all faucets. When the job was done and we turned the water back on, the downstairs showerhead suddenly began leaking badly. “Just dirty from the off and on water,” said Gino. He reached up to unscrew the showerhead, and it fell into three pieces in his hand. It was busted. I had to buy a new one. Back to General Plumbing.

Gino went out back to feed Frankie the cat on a break and the sliding glass door handle broke off. I had to rush order a new one from Jeld Wen. Two-day wait.

While out there he noticed the outside electrical outlet was dead. Frankie had no bed warmer. Then we noticed a bank of kitchen outlets were also dead. Perhaps as a result of the original outlet change from the fried prong? It’s still under investigation.

The kitchen faucet began to whistle. I had to order a new one from Groehe, two-day delivery. The hot water tank in the garage clanked and chattered like it was full of angry armadillos. It finally settled down, but the furnace stopped working again. It got cold. The furnace guy returned and billed me another $400.

“Don’t touch anything,” pleaded Gino. “For God’s sake, just wait until I leave on Thursday.” In the end, here’s what we got:

We got an overhauled furnace that purrs like a kitten, an awesome bronze water pump-style guest sink, a beautifully brushed wide showerhead for the guest bathroom, new paint jobs on the walls, and a shiny white door handle for the slider to my backyard. Frankie’s fanny is warm again. My receiver is being fixed by Mohammed in Vallejo, my house is warm, and my pipe is stubbed.

Gino will come in the spring and fix our kitchen outlets, and it will all begin again.

Steve Gibbs teaches at Benicia High School and has written a column for The Herald since 1985.