I did that with a old lawn mower battery with a dead cell in December of 2012. The battery would not charge with the existing electrolyte, so I figured I had nothing to lose. The electrolyte was drained off, the cells rinsed out. I used hard water deposits from my water heater to neutralize the electrolyte and baking soda to neutralize the cells. I then added the alum electrolyte and trickle charged.
Even with the dead cell, it was able to start my riding mower even in cold weather. I normally used the battery for powering electronic experiments. After being over discharged repeatedly and overcharged with a capacitive charger, the battery finally failed in September of 2013. When I tore down the battery, I discovered that the positive plates had pretty much corroded away. I believe the cause of failure to be the overcharging, as problems started occurring after I attempted to desulfate with the capacitive charger.
Your mileage will vary. I'm pretty sure the battery would have had better results with a fresh sulfuric acid electrolyte. There's a lot of misinformation out there on using various salts to make a better battery. If you have trash batteries to play with, by all means see if you can bring them back. It is a cheap way to power lighting, but I wouldn't count on such a battery to store power for running anything really important. Keep in mind the safety concerns of messing around with lead and sulfuric acid. It might not be worth the risk.