Soft Water Is Hard

So what am I supposed to do?

A couple months ago, I started noticing a little water on my basement laundry room floor.  From the washing machine, I thought, and since it wasn't bad and dried fairly quickly, I ignored it.


About two weeks ago I observed that the wetness was really coming from around my Sear's Kenmore water softener, a few feet up the basement floor slope from the washer.  I looked inside the tank, and it was full of water!  I've never seen that before.  Never, ever.  I tried regenerating right away, but the water only crept higher.  Not what one wants, right?


So I unplugged it, found out from the manual (which was hanging there in its plastic envelope) how to activate the bypass valve (good job for a rubber mallet), and went upstairs and called Sears.  Oh.  $65.00 just to come out and look, before parts and labor.  Not in the budget.  

I sent out a veiled SOS to my friends on Facebook.  Too veiled, obviously, because I got no response, not even one word of useless advice.  Oh, well, there's always the Internet.  So I Googled "Kenmore water softener full of water leaking."  And got advice there, yes, I did.  There were at least four different things various posters recommended be tried, each one of them looked complicated, and each one of them seemingly had to be done first.  

Please understand:  My water softener is in a dark corner of the basement, my eyesight is not very good, I never can see that stupid gray-on-gray display, and I couldn't find the place in the manual to show me where to find the venturi or the resin bed or anything else that needed to be cleaned or adjusted or whatever it was.  So I put it off.  

On the weekend, at the customary front porch gathering, I asked some of my neighbors if they'd ever serviced their water softeners.  No, they hadn't.  In fact, the guy across the street said they didn't even have one.

Well, if they can get along with hard water with a family of seven, I supposed I could for awhile, too.  And I left the softener on bypass the next ten days. 

But yesterday I think I spent a half hour or more rewashing supposedly clean dishes from the dishwasher.  I folded some white laundry last night and it looked yellow and dingy.  I can't get my shampoo to lather, and the water tastes funny.  Still I was putting off doing anything about it, until this afternoon after work.  

I have lots of laundry to do.  I'd really like it to come out clean.  Oh, phooey, I had to try cleaning the venturi at least.  I mean, come on, buck up.  Found the diagram in the manual (I'd been looking at the installation guide before--oops).  Found the venturi on the appliance.  Took it apart.  Barring a little red iron scum, it was clean.  Put it back together and turned the softener on.  Made no difference-- water level still high.  Found the page with the Manual Regeneration Check.  Put the softener through its paces: brining, brining rinse, backwash, fast rinse.  Water level actually went down a little bit, out through the drain hose-- then started filling up, higher, higher, scarily higher.  Oh, no, you don't!  Unplugged it and hammered the bypass back in place.

Back to the Internet.  No, sorry, the only way to get the water out is to siphon it or suck it out with the wet-dry vac.  OK, fine, I've got one of those.  After a few vacuum tankfuls (and a salty-wet basement floor), the water in the softener was gone.  But my vac was sucking up flakes of salt off the bottom.  Going by the mop handle that I use to distribute salt when I fill the WS, maybe 2" or 3" was hardened in there.  

Time for the hot water to melt it out. 


Hot water, hot water, hot water.  Ram it with the mop handle to break it up.  Ram, ram, ram.  


Take a look to see if I'm making any progress.  Poke the camera down in to document the event. Take a few pictures, using the flash.


Review the pictures to see what's going on, since I can't see down there very well.

Uhhhh, wait a minute.  There's this big cylinder in the back of the WS, that looks like it's made of heavy cardboard, but when you rap it, it sounds more like ceramic.  If I understand my manual correctly, that's the resin tank.  And there, down at about the 0.5 salt level, was what looked like a V-shaped rip in its side.

Did I do that damage right then, myself, with my plastic mop handle?  But no, the picture I took right after I got the water sucked out shows the crack already there.  And I haven't gone after a salt bridge for several months.  No, that resin tank cracked by itself.

I've been on the Internet (did I mention that before?).  I've learned that a cracked resin tank is doom for a water softener.  That if it ruptures, it can be doom for whatever's in your basement (especially if the water's still running through the WS).  That the resin in a broken tank can go running throughout your whole plumbing system, and while I haven't delved into what that means, it sounds bad.  And that replacing the resin tank and its contents can cost more than buying a new water softener.


My resin tank is toast.  I am not going to experiment with running the WS with the tank in that condition.  So what do I do?  This is not in the budget.  Do I stretch my credit even further and buy a new water softener?  Do I run hard water for the foreseeable future and ruin my clothes and coat my plumbing with lime? 

Blast it, what do I do?

Acid Test

Dog and hallway before 'experiment'

This evening I got back from church and went upstairs to change my clothes.  My dog followed me, and when I was almost done, I looked out the bedroom doorway, and--

That little twerp had peed all over the hall!  No, correction, he'd lifted his leg on the shellacked curved baseboard, then done some urinary arabesques on the floor cardboard nearby!

Dumb dog!  There was no reason for that.  I had him outside a mere four hours previous.

But here's the good part:  I tackled that baseboard with a wet sponge and a dry washcloth, and the dog pee hadn't affected it one bit.  No white marks, no hazing; wiped it off and it was fine.

Probably can't say that for where the dog's irrigations soaked through the paper supposedly protecting the perimeter of the floor.  But at least I know my shellac job passes the acid test.

Literally.

Actual Work Getting Done

Shellac dries fast.  This is good.

Really.  The shellac work I'm doing in my stairhall is actually starting to look like something.  I may actually be on my way to getting this done.  

And that's scary.

(That was a joke.  I think.)

The inner casings on the five 2nd floor hall doorways are all done, including the casing to my bedroom door that I had to take down to mend.  That also has primer on the bedroom side.  The blotchiness problem I solved thanks to some advice I dug up the other night on the Internet-- A forum suggested cutting down the amount of tint in the shellac and let the application of successive layers build up the color.  I was just upstairs, and was getting a little worried that maybe I've got it a fuzz too dark, but it's not as dusky as it originally was, and we're talking at night under only a 60 watt lightbulb.

The flash makes it look brighter than it really is

The stair rail and shoe are done as well.  I really like the way the bannister came out.  I've figured out that if I start shellacking the piece well short of the top, work in the length between the initial wet area and the top with a dryer brush, then keep stroking upward (or in one direction only, if working flat) into the wet area, I can minimize the blotches and keep the finish uniform.  It worked on the bannister, I think.

The balusters are done as well.  They were theoretically mostly done last summer with the two coats I gave them then, but I saw that my intended three coats wasn't going to give the tone and sheen to match the stairrail and shoe.  They have five coats of shellac on them now; six on the outside faces.

Now I have to lay on more coats of shellac to the shoe and rail fillets.  They're laid out on my workbench downstairs, waiting the next time I have available.  But first I have to strip (waaaaagghh!) the cap to the 1st floor newel post.  I didn't have enough light in my workshop, and didn't notice till it was too late that a wide brown-black line of walnut-mahogany shellac was accumulating all around the bottom edge.  Yuck.  Strip it off and start again.

Stairs to 3rd floor study

The top newel post is done-- I think-- and today I got a second coat on the risers to the 3rd floor and on the main stair stringer on the stair rail side.  (I ran out of the right tint of shellac after that, and the main stair risers and the opposite stringer had to wait till I could mix up more.)

Last evening my friend Hannah* and her husband Steve* were going to come over to help me reassemble and rehang the casing to the bedroom door.  They couldn't fit it into their schedule as it turned out.  And now that I've remembered that I really want to get the finish on the hall floor before that trim goes back up, I see it's just as well.

Guess what-- this trim isn't that dark. Stoopy camera!

But in anticipation of getting the bedroom door hung, I shellacked its stop moulding, though I haven't touched it for any door else.  So this afternoon I took a piece of that stop upstairs to make sure I was getting the shellac-white primer divide on the casings right.  I stood the piece up against the closed door to the guest bedroom, flat against the shellacked jamb.  And, oh, my!  Wow.  It actually looked like something!  Like real work getting done!  Like maybe sometime before the Mayan calendar runs out my house might get out of my head and into reality!

That's scary.

Trumpets (But with Mutes)

Yesterday, Tuesday, 29 March 2011, was a momentous day here at the Sows' Ear.  For on that day, after half a week of taping and masking, I finally laid on the first coats of shellac on the woodwork of my 2nd and 1st floor halls.

(Can I get a dish of applesauce here?)

This is the first week I've had evenings off since the end of January, when I started working front desk at Dick & Harry's Tax Service.*  Initially I was merely going to wipe everything down and do the shellacking Later.  But it hits me that dust has a tendency to resettle, especially with four furry animals in the house.  So some finish application was in order.

Started with a clear coat of Kusmi #2 on the doorway to the 3rd floor and to the former entryway downstairs.  I'd noticed on samples I'd made that the tinted shellac shows up better when it goes on over a clear coat instead of wood that's clean sanded.  

Doorway to Study stairs, 2nd floor

On this 2nd floor doorway you can see where the paint soaked in behind where the old stop moulding used to be.  I tried sanding it out, but it was too deep. Will the tinted shellac cover that?  I hope so.

Here's the doorway between the 1st floor hall and the front room partly clearcoated.  The camera makes the color look more intense and orange than it was.

Old entry door, 1st floor

Then the same untinted Kusmi #2 on the sanded sill between the 1st floor hall and the living room.

Cased opening sill

My initial idea was that I'd let these coats dry overnight and do the tinted shellac today.  But I'd forgotten how quickly shellac dries.  So what the heck, why not?

Started at the top, with the risers of the stairs to the 3rd floor.  These still have patina on them, and didn't need an initial clear coat.

3rd floor stair risers, partially done
 

  Then the rest of the risers, the casing, and the bottom end of the stringer.

1st coat shellac, 2nd floor hall

 Then the hall side of the door casings to the guest bedroom, the bathroom, and the hall closet.

And the curved baseboard and the 2x frame around the 2nd floor hall window.

Since I was rolling with it, I proceeded to do the upstairs newel post, the oak stair bannister and shoe, the 1st floor newel, the frame around the downstairs hall window, the doorway between the hallway and the front room, the sill between the hall and the living room, and the moulding that sits on the wall over the hall bench, under the bannister shoe.  Then I came back up and laid a coat on the main stair tread and on the pine stringers either side of the main stairs.  Drew the line at shellacking the hall bench, since it still had the protective paper on it and I hadn't cleaned underneath it.

Looking down from the 2nd floor

I don't have pictures of all this wondrousness, because my stoopy camera eats batteries like I should drink water, the ones I had in were dying, and I had no more in the house to replace them.  (Last time I'll buy a camera that takes AAs, believe you me.)  But maybe that's just as well, since I was shellacking without a worklight, deliberately.  The plan was that if I worked by natural light only I wouldn't get too fussy about making the first coat perfectly even, but leave it to the next coats to blend it all in.

Blotchy mess!

But as you can see from this very blurry shot I took today (no battery power left to use the flash), maybe that wasn't such a--ahem!--bright idea.  What a blotchy mess, and this doesn't show the half of it.

The saving grace is that the successive coats of shellac should blend it in, though it'll probably take a clear coat or two to accomplish that.

The color isn't as dark as it shows up in the photos.  But I doubt I'll make it as walnutty-dark as it was originally.  I want the reddish warmth and the grain to come through.

While I Was at It

While I was patching and filling and sanding doorways last month, I was also up to a thing or two more.

One that I can be pleased and relieved about:  On the 14th I got the sill to the opening between the 1st floor hall and the living room filled and resanded.

(Yeah, there's still tons to do)

The other thing, which I perpetrated the day before, was definitely nothing to brag about.  I got myself tangled up in my grandma's old floor lamp that I was using as a work light and sent it crashing into the bottom step and broke the brand-new three-way light bulb and the globe.  Yes, it's all replaceable, but why put myself into the position to have to spend the money? 

And I can't get this photo to stay rotated.

Alas, alas!

Mortise Patching Exploits

Okay, here are the photos from January 11th and following I promised a few days ago.  (Note to me:  Don't load too many photos at once into Blogger.  It's nigh-impossible to wrangle them into the correct order).

The job was to fill the old hinges and strike mortises in casings where doors had been removed.  I don't know why I stressed over the job and put it off for so long.  When it came down to it, it was really no big deal.

First I tackled the doorway between the 1st floor hall and the front room.  This used to be the front door of the house, but the door was removed when the porch was converted to a front room, and the mortises were covered up with ¼" thick pieces of plywood, which my PO-2 shellacked to match the rest of the woodwork. I tried stripping one of those a couple years back and said, No more.  The old door casing was good enough for me.

I started with the mortises, with pieces of original yellow pine cut from an old disused floorboard, glued in proud:

Top hinge mortise patched

Middle & bottom filled proud

Bottom hinge-side patch.  Almost right depth as-is

Old Entry Door Strike Mortise

Then I did the same for the strike.  Here's what it looked like Before.  (I knocked out the piece at the upper right to avoid having to make any fancy cuts.)

Mortise Patch Glued In

Same again, with the rough patch for the strike mortise glued in.  Note how shallow the mortise is.  No way I'm risking my fingers to cut a patch that thin on the table saw.

Then I moved operations upstairs.  This is the doorway to the third floor stairs.  Evidence shows that there was no door there when the house was first built (they had to hack away the bullnose on one of the treads to accommodate it), but it's also apparent that a door had been there for a very long time.  Not sure if it was the same owner who took it down and filled the mortises with pieces of characterless white pine, but I knew they'd glare if I let them remain.  So they'd been out ever since I stripped that doorway (mumble, mumble) years ago, and if I had a ton of money, I would have had a true-divided-lite, tempered-glass door custom made and rehung there.  But that ain't the way things are, so these mortises were dealt with next.

(When I'm rich-- HA!!-- I can always knock out the patches and put my dream door up then.)

Strike mortise that needs filled

Bottom mortise rough-filled

On the hinge side you can see where the POs marked the wood to position the hinge.

I really wish I could have found some old wood to match the existing grain, but I had to settle for what I had.  Hopefully, the shellac will even everything out.









 Here's the strike patch glued in, with some extra help until it dries.

Door to 3rd floor, strike side

  

Old screen door rabbet

But one more thing needed to be done before I could leave all the glue to dry.  There was the matter of the holes left in the trim of the former entry door when the original screen door was relocated, sometime in the early 1930s.  I'd had ideas of taking wood filling and sculpting it somehow to match the curves in the trim, but I wasn't quite sold on the idea.  But wait a minute.  Didn't I have some long pieces of old yellow pine the right thickness, left over from cutting strips to fill in the 2nd floor hall flooring?  Yes!












That worked, and with a little wood filler daubed on to simulated the curves, I pronounced it Good Enough for one evening's work.

3rd floor stairs, hinge side, planed

Next day, I  took my grandpa's antique plane and smoothed the patches down.  Really, the realization that I could use it was what got me past the brain-freeze and procrastination.  Before, I'd been sure there was no way I could cut fiddling pieces of wood like that to any accurate thickness, but plane, plane, plane, and the difficulty (and the extra wood) was removed.

Old entry doorway, hinge side, filled

Then lay in wood filler to close up the gaps.

Old entry, strike patch sanded

Old entry, hinge side sanded

 Day after, the downstairs doorway got sanded.

Old entry, hinge patch, fine-sanded

Old entry, strike patch, fine-sanded

Then filled some more, and sanded again.

If your eyesight is bad as mine, the patches can hardly be seen!

Wood filler galore

Nice and sanded

Strike side

This still left the upstairs patches to fill and sand and finish off.  That didn't happen till the evening of the18th and early on the19th.


































When you tap on the piece over the old strike mortise, it definitely sounds hollow.  Don't care to think how thin it is, now it's sanded down.  But it's flush, and it'll do.















Here we are in the 2nd floor hall, with all the mortises filled and most of the tape off the stairs.  And that's enough for now.

No, the House Hasn't Eaten Me. Yet.

Have I been working on the house?  Yes.  Have I been working on the house as quickly as I ought to? No.

I had two doorways to patch where doors were removed, at the old entry door between the front room (former porch) and the stairhall, and at the bottom of the stairs to the third floor.  A couple weeks ago I cut old yellow pine to fit the hinge and strike mortises, planed them down, and sanded all round the casings.  They look nice, but pictures will have to wait-- I loaded them onto the other computer.

Sadly, there are no new shellacking pictures.  That's because I haven't laid on any new shellac.  I'm still cleaning up the dust mess, and the work is going very slowly.

First, because I'm changing Internet service providers and I'm dealing with the whole old-new e-mail address transition.

Second, because cleaning my Study meant more than sucking up the dust, it also meant going through my books, rearranging many, retiring some to the storage space, selecting some to give away, and even chucking a few.

And third, it's going slowly because I don't like deep cleaning the house, and I keep putting it off.  It's so much more fun to watch on-line videos that actually stream thanks to my new, faster ISP.

But as soon as I publish this post, I'm going upstairs to clean my bedroom.  The curtains and dust ruffle, which were filthy, are clean and dry down in the dryer, and until the room dust is gone and I can put them back, there's no going to bed for me tonight.