Pal Jeff just purchased and moved into his new house! Sounds like he’s got his hands full what with the painting and wiring and whatnot. I wish that we could have done all the fix-ups that he’s doing now when we bought our house, but the wedding pretty much sucked away any spare cash that we had at the time.

Reading of Jeff’s adventures in the world of house fixer-upping reminds me of a problem I have yet to lick! We have really hard water at our house. It’s a little annoying because it means we have to clean bathroom fixtures about twice as frequently as most people have to.

Anyhoo, the calcium deposits have really gunked up the insides of an aerator in one of our sinks downstairs. Water still flows through it, but it’s not a smooth stream like you’d expect to come out of a faucet. It’s a minor annoyance, but I can’t fix it.

The minerals have built up and solidified inside it so badly that I can’t even unscrew the darn thing to replace it. I’ve tried to squirt CLR (the Calcium-Lime-Rust remover) up in it, but that had almost no effect whatsoever. I guess I could always call a plumber, but man what a waste that would be. A new aerator is like…a dollar.

I will continue to fight my battle with hard water, and will contemplate the purchse of a water softener.