I think a defat is not necessary. The sample I ran on TLC which showed only 1 spot was without any defat.

What are you salting with? With BA I think having dry acetone is perhaps not that important since it has a poor solubility in water. Also, I don't know at what rate acetone absorbs water, but my pulls stood for several hours after BA addition so surely the acetone would absorb some water in this time.

This might vary with other salts though as we don't know their solubility in water.