Adventures in Home Improvement

As you know, we have been busy (okay, Brian has been busy) working on getting a few projects done around the house before the babies arrive. One thing Brian wanted to do is get a whole-house water filter installed so that the water that comes out of every faucet, shower head, etc. is filtered. You can buy the filters at Lowe's or Home Depot, but it turns out that installing the filter was a bigger job than he originally though it would be. So...we ended up having a plumber at the house for a couple of days digging around the front yard looking for whatever pipes he needed (can you tell I'm not really sure how this filter thing works exactly?) and installing the filter in the garage.

When he was finished, I turned on the kitchen faucet to make sure the water was running fine...no problem. However, things went downhill when I went to  flush the toilet for the first time. The toilet started making really loud noises and began filling up with a black liquid. I didn't know what to do other than call Brian (and take a picture, of course). Before you get too grossed out, know that it was NOT sewage--I wouldn't make you look at a picture of that!

Brian is notorious for being hard to get in touch with while he's at work...he's almost always in a meeting or on the phone or something. So I sent him a two word text message that I figured would get his attention: "Plumbing emergency." It worked like a charm! Long story short, he called the plumber who assured us that it was just charcoal that had to run through the pipes for a bit, and all is now well with our filter.

Over the weekend, Brian painted the nursery. The nursery is going to be in what used to be our workout room (and by workout room I mean room that housed our elliptical machine). I used to go in there almost every day to use the elliptical, but the workout room has been sadly neglected these past couple of months (and by neglected I mean no one sets foot in the room, ever). So we went in last week to start talking about paint colors, etc., and we noticed something strange on the wall:

 

 

Now does that or does that not look like bird poop? That was my first thought anyways. I formulated a theory that a rogue bird had somehow gotten in the house, flown around, pooped on the wall, and then left undetected! Then, I started thinking about the bird returning one day and pooping on our babies...ewww! Upon further inspection (done by Brian on a ladder), it's not poop at all, but a gash that went all the way through the drywall. A little less gross than bird poop, but no less strange. We have no idea when or how it happened, especially since it is up so high on the wall that neither of us can even reach it. I guess we'll never know how it got there, but it's now all patched up and painted over, and the room remains free of any rogue birds and their poop!