Old wood stains can loose their drying capability

Q. We're getting our house ready to put on the market, so I asked my husband to stain the deck. It is about 10 years old and not well maintained. He stained it with an old can of Cabot stain about two weeks ago, and now the deck won't dry! Can you please tell us how to remedy this?

A. You have given me very little information. What type of wood or synthetic material is your deck made of? What preparation did your husband make before applying the stain? Was the deck material not completely dry from recent rains? The stain is likely to be a solid color, as a semitransparent stain would have soaked in and should be dry by now, unless the wood was damp and the stain alkyd (latex stains and paints can be applied to slightly damp wood because they are water-based). How old is the can of stain? Old alkyd stains and paints lose their drying agents over time and would take forever to dry, if at all. Your choices are to wait a few more weeks and see if the stain will eventually dry; wipe the stain with paint thinner, which can result in a mottled effect; or remove it completely with a stain and paint remover. Cabot makes several such products.

Q. We bought a home with a large fireplace. Sometimes when we have a fire going, we notice a terrible odor, like sewage! What could be causing this? And what can be done about it? We have stopped using the fireplace and only use our wood stove. In our previous home, we noticed a similar odor in the summertime only, coming from a new bathroom we had added on the first floor not the kind of “scent” you want in your home! Can you explain this?

A. If the odor is coming from a bathroom, the draft from the fireplace may be creating suction that draws in sewer gases from a failing toilet wax seal or an empty trap in another fixture. If the house is older and has siphon traps under the kitchen and bathroom sinks, they may lose their water seal under certain conditions. The wood stove may not cause this smell, because its draft may not be as great as the fireplace's.

If the smell does not emanate from a bathroom, you may be smelling the back draft from the wood-stove flue or, more serious, the flue to the heating system caused by the large demand for replacement air required by the fireplace and this may be a dangerous safety issue if the heating appliance is on, as it will draw carbon monoxide into the house.

Q. I want to update my kitchen and bathroom countertops. Of course, granite immediately comes to mind. However, I am hearing more and more about radon from the granite. Does granite give off enough radon to be a health hazard? Is quartz a better alternative? I would appreciate any information you can share on what is the best, safest and most easily maintained countertop.

A. Granite can exude radon gas, and any radon inside a house should be avoided. I also believe granite is a fad, as was wall-to-wall carpeting. Now it's all about hardwood floors, but this was not the case in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

I prefer DuPont's Corian, which is what we have in our kitchen and bathrooms. Corian has been around for decades and is available in many patterns. I have used it in the past instead of ceramic tiles to create durable and attractive tub liners. Nowadays, Corian is available as tub and shower surrounds in kits, which was not the case until recently. Not only is Corian easily tooled; it is also easy to maintain, as long as you wipe spills immediately, which applies to all surfaces.

Q. I was in my attic this weekend and noticed mold on the plywood in the roof. There is no moisture that I can see, and the attic has five vents. Should I be concerned? If so, what is the next step?

A. If the mold is in the area above the attic access panel or stairs, it is most likely caused by moisture convecting into the attic around these openings and condensing on the cold plywood sheathing, which encourages the growth of mold. In this case, you can weatherstrip the openings with a closed-cell, peel-and-stick weatherstripping. I have also seen similar conditions where a bathroom, kitchen or dryer vent is discharged into the attic instead of to the outside.

Q. Our cleaning lady waxed our floors, which have a polyurethane finish. Now they squeak when we walk on them. We don't know how to remove the wax without damaging the original finish. Do you?

A. Ammonia and water will remove the wax, but unless this is an old polyurethane finish that has already yellowed with time, the finish is likely to be affected.

Q. I am writing on behalf of my girlfriend who has been having issues with her air conditioners. They are made by Bryant and were installed six years ago when she had her house built. She started having problems with them about four years ago. Being a first-time homeowner, she was not aware that she should have received the manuals and warranties relating to their installation, use and service when she passed papers on the house. So not being aware of any warranties, she paid for all the service calls. I contacted Bryant, but because the warranties and installation date were not on file, they absolutely flat out refused to help. The local outfits that have been servicing the air conditioners are saying they were placed too close the oil-fired, water-heater power vent and that the exhaust fumes are causing the problems.

She did put a few cinder blocks between the vent and the air conditioners a couple of years ago, which the service outfit recommended, but the deterioration has continued to the point where they need to be replaced. They will also be moved in case the vent is the cause. Any help or advice you can offer on the cause and/or a remedy will be greatly appreciated.

A. The installers should have left her all the manuals and warranty information, but after six years, your girlfriend does not have much recourse. However, you can retrieve all that information on the Internet using the serial numbers and models of her units. The installers should also have taken the prevailing winds into consideration when locating the condensers, as it is quite possible that the carbolic acid from the water heater's vent may have caused the corrosion visible in the photos you sent careful installers check this out. The wall built a couple of years ago should stop the wind action and eliminate that as the cause of the corrosion. But it is unfortunate that, when the problem was discovered and the wall built between the power vent and the condensers, maintenance was not performed to prevent further damage. The rust should have been removed from all steel parts with steel wool and the affected parts painted with a metal paint such as Rust-Oleum. However, if the air conditioning is working, there should be no need to replace the condensers. Perform the suggested maintenance, and that should be all that is needed.

Interesting tidbit: A couple of days ago, I mistakenly and carelessly placed a plastic egg container on a still warm burner on our glass cooktop. The plastic melted and stuck very hard to the glass. I was able to remove it safely, albeit with a lot of elbow grease, once the top had cooled as the instructions suggest, with the SKrAPr, a hard plastic tool originally designed to scrape encrusted spills off glass-top cooking surfaces, instead of a razor blade. I have mentioned it before after I used it to clean our outdoor electric grill, but I had not had the occasion to try it on a glass cooktop. It worked as intended. The SKrAPr comes with a mini 4-inch SKrAPr and two SKrAPr papers to sharpen the edges. It sells for $14.99 at www.TheSKrAPr.com.

Henri de Marne was a remodeling contractor in Washington, D.C., for many years, and is now a consultant. Write to him in care of the Daily Herald, P.O. Box 280, Arlington Heights, IL 60006, or via e-mail at henridemarne@gmavt.net.

© 2010, United Feature Syndicate Inc.