AARGH! A long, but thrilling, shower story

This is my shower. I waited many years for it, and it's all I ever wished for in a shower. But today my dreams were shattered as I discovered that the beauty, the wonder - indeed the miracle - that IS my shower has been, from the beginning, a complete and total sham. Here's the story:
Those of you who have known us since we moved into this house may know that we have had a myriad of problems with our master bathroom shower. Less than a year after we moved in, the vinyl flooring near the shower became discolored. We called our contractor, who sent Pato (that's Spanish for "duck") out to fix the problem. Unfortunately, Pato didn't think the shower was leaking. He just thought some water had escaped the confines of our shower door and slid under the vinyl. He replaced the vinyl and resealed all the caulking around the shower pan. But the problem was still there, and the new vinyl flooring started to turn grey a few months later. By then our homeowner's warranty had expired, so our contractor wouldn't send anyone out - even though they never fixed the original problem, which HAD occurred during the warranty period. Our next idea was that the water was leaking through the grout in the shower, and we thought about re-grouting the whole thing and sealing it. However, we knew that if that was the problem, we were bound to have damage (like mold) on the sheet rock behind the tile, which would have to be replaced before we did anything to the tile. We didn't have the money to do any of that repair work, so we took showers across the hall in the kids' bathroom and ignored our bathroom leak. After a few years of everyone taking showers and baths in the kids' bathroom, we had a serious problem in that shower. Water had gotten behind the tile and rotted the sheetrock, and a few tiles were about to fall into the tub. Since we now had serious issues in both bathrooms, we had to do something. We called GroutPro, who, for a sizeable chunk of change, took all the tile off the walls in both showers, put up "green board" to replace the sheetrock, and re-tiled everything. We thought our troubles were over. Yippee! I could shower in my own bathroom again! But...it was not to be. We began to notice new damage to the flooring outside the shower in our bathroom, and again we stopped using that shower and made the daily walk across the hall to the kids' bathroom. We were SOOOO frustrated. During this time, Jonathan played baseball on a team coached by one of the owners of the construction company that built our house. I had to hold myself back from giving him a piece of my mind several times. Anyway, a few more years went by and we saved up enough to hire a plumber to find the leak in the shower. When we were told that they would have to take the tile off the wall to get to the leak, or go through the outside wall of our second floor (not knowing exactly where, on the other side, the shower pipes were), we balked. We waited a few more years, knowing we would have to buy all new tile for the shower since the plumbers were going to have to remove some of it and we couldn't match it since it was several years old. That would take money, and we would have to have GroutPro or some other tile experts reinstall the tile, which would also take a lot of money. We started saving, planning to have the work done one step at a time. We had a reputable plumber come out and find the leak, which was in the pipe connection behind the faucet. He fixed it, but, as we expected, he had to remove several tiles, some of which he broke. We started saving for the next step - purchase of new tile. I got GroutPro to come out and give us a quote for the installation so I'd know how much to save for that part as well. Then I got to thinking about tile - and about how much I hated tile. And I recalled the many experiences we had had with tile over the 17 years since we had bought the house. Caulking the kids' bathtub every year or so was no fun, and I imagined myself having to do that task in TWO bathrooms every year instead of one. All of a sudden I was content only having one shower. I think I could have gone another 17 years walking across the hall to shower. The kids were starting to move out, and in another two years we'd have the whole house to ourselves anyway. But (drum roll please) that's when we found out about BATHFITTER! Bathfitter can work miracles in a bathroom. They come in and cover your existing fixtures with shiny new stuff that LOOKS like tile but ISN'T tile. It's all one piece, so there's no grout! I started to get really excited. I could have a brand new shower that wouldn't need to be resealed every year, or re-caulked every year, or even cleaned much (I love Clean Shower). I began saving money for my new shower and checked into Bathfitter. Last November, after seeing Bathfitter reps at the fair, I got my new shower. It wasn't cheap, but we got one year with no payments and no interest, and we decided we were DONE taking showers across the hall. My new shower is beautiful. From November, 2007, until this past Saturday, December 20th, 2008, I enjoyed its beauty, it's sparkling whiteness, and the luxury of having a shower so near to my closet. Alas, the nirvana I thought I had entered was a mirage - a hallucination brought on by so many years of deprivation. My brand new shiny shower was LEAKING!
Evidence of the leak, my shower's betrayal, was spotted by Natalie on our dining room ceiling as she was doing her evening stretches below. Don't ask me why she was exercising in the dining room. I have no idea. We stopped using the shower immediately and called Bathfitter. I couldn't bring myself to shower across the hall, so I've been using our tub. The plumber came today and verified that, indeed, our shower is leaking - not from the faucet, though. This time it's leaking down at the bottom where it drains. So at least it's not the same old leak - it's a NEW leak. So we've got that going for us, which is nice. Makes it more exciting. Here is a picture of the damage to our dining room ceiling, which I may not have noticed for a while, since I rarely stand in the corner of my dining room and look up. Who knows what possessed Natalie to do her stretches over in that corner (Dad, if that was you, THANKS!), but she saved the day. She also saved our brand new carpet! A few more showers may have caused the ceiling to fall in, and we would have had a "call the insurance company" type of mess. The plumber says they can fix the leak on Friday and then they'll send someone out to patch up and repaint the damaged area of our ceiling. Dare I hope that my shower troubles are nearly over? (To be continued...)