Oh, rats

We had a rat under the sink and in the garage for a while. I know rats gnaw on things, but this one seemed to have a liking for cleaning products. Bottles of laundry detergent, Jet Dry, Lysol, vinyl/car cleaner, 409 - all gnawed through. But then, it also chewed a doll, a dress shoe, and a golf ball. Actually, we're not sure if this was one rodent, or several over time, because we found mouse droppings in the garage, and we found what were definitely rat droppings under the sink.

I'm not a fan of animal violence, but I'm more than kinda hoping this was the rat whose snout we found out on the front porch a few months ago. I'm just hoping whichever cat got it wasn't harmed by the rat's penchant for plastic and cleaning products.

Oh, and ...

The water is currently shut off to the house. We have a handyman out to do various things in the bathroom and to replace the kitchen faucet. Well, things aren't exactly going as planned.

1) no water shutoff under the kitchen sink. We have no idea why. Hence the main water is shut off.

2) When he took the old faucet off, the pipe sheared off at the nipple. Apparently it had been installed using dissimilar metals (looks like steel and brass), and is corroded as hell.

3) This is a wall-mount faucet, which means he has to now tear off the backsplash to get at the pipes.

.... I just got a look at the backsplash. The wood has been soaking up water like a sponge. It's completely rotted.

So we need to get new nipples for the pipes, somehow get the rest of the old nipples out of the pipes, and do something about the now-torn-apart backsplash, and we may not be able to have the water turned back on tonight.

Yayyy home maintenance!

ETA: Oh, and the old toilet is currently out on the lawn. Must look lovely.