Ask This Old House

KEVIN

Today on "Ask This Old House"...

RICHARD

I'll take you inside your bathroom vanity's drain system to show you how to clear a stoppage. A lot of times, little pieces can sit in that trap and they'll just catch everything they can.

JENN

And I'm in D.C. to make a simple lawn soar by attracting birds and pollinators.

AMY

It's an absolutely incredible transformation. I love it.

TOM

And patching a wood floor can be a challenge, but I'll show you the secret on getting it right.

KEVIN

It's white, round, with a hole in the top. What is it? I just downloaded an anger management app.

RICHARD

Okay, let me just do this on my phone.

Laughter

KEVIN

That's next on "Ask This Old House." Hi, there. I'm Kevin O'Connor, and welcome back to "Ask This Old House," where we love hearing questions about your house. Today, we are tackling problems like plumbing and flooring and out in the garden, Roger, because it seems like this time of year, everybody starts thinking about outside.

ROGER

It's springtime. Everyone wants to go outside and do something. They're not sure what, but they want to do something.

KEVIN

So, what are the trends? What are you seeing people doing?

ROGER

Outdoor rooms is big. My job is to get you out of the house and into the yard, connect a patio to the house and put in maybe a hot tub, maybe a fireplace. That's gonna be a place where the whole family can go.

KEVIN

I am all for that.

ROGER

Also in the garden now is plants you can eat. Not just ornamentals. A plant like a blueberry is great. It has color for the garden, but then you get those nice blueberries you can eat right off of there.

KEVIN

We've got a couple blueberries in the front yard, and the kids are all over them.

ROGER

The third one would be a wildlife garden. Right now, everyone's into attracting birds, bees to the garden. The kids can go out there and watch them, and it's really interesting.

KEVIN

That definitely piqued the interest of Jenn Nawada, 'cause she's in Washington, D.C., right now. She's working with a homeowner, putting in a new front garden. And the homeowner actually works at the Smithsonian's National Zoo, which is where they're taking some of their inspiration from.

AMY

So, Jenn, welcome to the Smithsonian's National Zoo.

JENN

Thanks. It's great to be here.

AMY

You know, it's the most incredible place to work, and we're open to the public 364 days of the year -- every day except Christmas.

JENN

It really feels like a park setting here.

AMY

You know, and that's on purpose. Our park was actually designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.

JENN

Frederick Law Olmsted -- my favorite landscape architect. He designed Central Park in New York, pretty much all of Boston's parks, and the local zoo that I take my kids to.

AMY

Yeah, this is very Olmsted. But let me go ahead and take you to my favorite part of the zoo.

JENN

Oh, I'd love to see it.

AMY

So, Jenn, this is our Zoo in Your Own Backyard exhibit, and I absolutely love this place. It's where I hold meetings. I eat my lunch here. It's really about inspiring people to create an ecosystem in their own backyards that attracts birds, bees, all sorts of pollinators, and, really, wildlife, too.

JENN

Well, it looks chaotic, but there is a design here. You have different textures and heights, starting tall in the back, graduating towards the front, and many colorful plants that are going to attract bees and butterflies.

AMY

So, do you think this is something we can sort of try in my yard?

JENN

I think we should give it a shot. We can make something happen.

AMY

Okay, well, let's head on up.

JENN

All right. Great.

AMY

So, Jenn, welcome to our house. We've lived here about just over a year.

JENN

This place is beautiful.

AMY

We were really excited about being in this neighborhood, particularly because we could have a lawn and a garden.

JENN

There is great opportunity here. And to make it even a little more beautiful, local landscape designer Josh Dean. How you doing?

JOSH

Hi. Doing Well. Thank you.

Hi. Good to see you again. -JOSH

Nice to see you, too.

JENN

SO, you want to tell us a little bit of what you're scheming here?

JOSH

Right. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna plant a garden that's all about pollinators -- birds, bees, butterflies. We have native perennials. We have native shrubs. What we found here was a lawn all the way up to the house. We had some invasive exotics, Rose of Sharon, that were planted. So we've taken them out. We've sacrificed part of the lawn in order to create our planting beds. And what we have are some stepping stones running through the center as a garden path.

JENN

And this is gonna provide great access for you to come and do a little maintenance on our garden.

AMY

Yeah. And so, we're first-time gardeners. So budget was definitely a concern, as well.

JOSH

And that's important because we could have pushed all the way out to the sidewalk with perennials, but this is really -- it's a balance for a beginning gardener, as well as budget. If we had gone all the way to the sidewalk, the budget would have skyrocketed.

JENN

Well, this is great. Who wants to get started on the planting?

JOSH

Yeah, let's stage it. Let's go.

Let's do it. -AMY

Great.

JENN

Wow, it's really looking incredible in here. What do you think?

AMY

Josh, the pops of color are just absolutely amazing.

JOSH

Well, I think season after season, you're gonna have surprises. You're gonna love it. What we've really tried to do is layer the garden from low at the front of the garden towards high at the house. And one of those high plants that we've got is switchgrass. It's gonna get 5 to 6 feet tall in this location.

JENN

That's a great backdrop.

JOSH

Absolutely. And the butterflies love it.

JENN

And what about this one right here?

JOSH

It's Joe-Pye weed. And, again, it's gonna be a nectar source and habitat for the butterflies.

JENN

It's beautiful. And then I see we have some inkberries here, a nice evergreen backdrop for the foundation.

AMY

Yeah, and, Josh, that'll be perfect for the wintertime. It can get kind of barren right in front of our house.

JENN

And as we transition into the perennial world down here, look at this beautiful coneflower.

JOSH

The birds -- especially the goldfinches -- are gonna love that coneflower. And the phlox are just gonna be a draw for hummingbirds and butterflies. And we've got that in shades of purple, white, and pink. And we've got that on both sides of the path.

AMY

I can't wait to see the kind of wildlife this attracts.

JENN

And it transitions down to this lower beautiful purple.

JOSH

This is a beautiful perennial. It's Stokes' aster, or stokesia. It's gonna have evergreen foliage during the winter, which is big for our structure. We don't just want for this to be a sea of mulch.

JENN

So, we have the sun plantings over here. Let's see what we have over here in the shade.

JOSH

We've got quite a few plantings underneath this willow oak over here.

JENN

Like this beautiful oakleaf hydrangea.

JOSH

This is oakleaf hydrangea Alice. It grows both in full sun and full shade, but because it's in shade, it's gonna have very large leaves.

JENN

And the larger the leaves, the better for photosynthesis.

AMY

Wow. And what about the color of the flowers?

JOSH

This is gonna be a creamy white in the June timeframe.

AMY

Great.

JENN

And the fall foliage is spectacular.

AMY

Wow.

JENN

Looks like we have some more perennials over here.

AMY

Are these ferns, Josh?

JOSH

They are ferns. That's a deciduous wood fern. Over here, I've got an evergreen wood fern. And they'll be at least 3 feet tall as they mature.

AMY

Wow. And so this is gonna be super lush and green in this section?

JOSH

It will be.

JENN

So, why don't we get planting?

JOSH

Whenever you're digging, you want to call a utility marking service to stay safe. We do have a gas line running through the yard, so we do have to be careful of that. So, what we want to do is dig a hole almost as deep as the container, just a little bit wider. Take the plant out of the container. You want to break up that root ball so that the roots have as much opportunity to grow out into the surrounding soil as possible.

AMY

Here we go. Does that look good?

JENN

Looks perfect.

JOSH

We want to plant it high, backfill with a mixture of the existing soil and the organic material from the bed.

JENN

With the plants all in place, we're gonna spread this hardwood mulch. And we want to put it about 2 to 3 inches thick, spread it around, and just keep away from the base of the plants as to not smother them.

AMY

Okay.

JOSH

We want to give everything a nice, deep soaking to start. We want to check it once a day to check and see if it needs more water.

JENN

So, the plants are installed, the mulch is in, everything's watered. What do you think?

AMY

It's an absolutely incredible transformation. I love it.

JOSH

Well, and the butterflies love it, too. And that's only the beginning. You're gonna have birds, bees -- everyone's gonna come and enjoy this garden.

AMY

We've already got a butterfly right over there.

Beautiful. -JENN

That's amazing.

AMY

Jenn, thank you so much for coming to Washington, and, Josh, thank you so much for all your hard work. It's incredible.

Thank you. -JENN

Thanks for having us.

KEVIN

Wow. That was a pretty big transformation. I mean, sort of a ho-hum yard to start, and now just tons of color.

TOM

And I love the way you use those perennials with a first-time homeowner.

JENN

Because perennials come back every year, as opposed to annuals. So I don't want her buying every year.

TOM

Well, so the size of the garden is very important. You just took a little piece. And then, later on, if the gardener really loves what she's doing, she could go into a bigger garden. But right now, she has to weed, water, take care of the perennials. Let's see how she does with that.

JENN

Yeah. Let her get started. And as the years go, her perennials will grow and she could divide them and expand the garden.

KEVIN

I like the idea, too, of having different colors happen at different times of the year. I mean, I got to be honest with you, I've got a couple gardens, and they all look like everything I bought in June.

TOM

'Cause you walked in the garden center, it was in flower then. Sequencing is the most important thing. Many people get a big blast early in the spring, and then everything else is gone.

JENN

It's all about multi-seasonal interest.

KEVIN

So, you're getting different flowers and different colors, but you had a couple things that were underneath the trees that were really just different foliage, right?

JENN

Like the oakleaf hydrangeas. I mean, that's gonna provide structure to the garden as well as beautiful foliage.

TOM

All the plants have something to offer besides the flower.

KEVIN

Well,

nice job. -JENN

Thanks.

SCOTT

All right, guys. It's small, plastic. It's got a white dome. It's got a hole here and a little metal ring around it. What is it?

RICHARD

Really? This is the game we're gonna play?

KEVIN

I think. What are you talking about?

RICHARD

I mean, this is so obvious. This is just another Bluetooth speaker. See the little -- Let me get the phone out. No, here it is. I'll play Pandora, Barry Manilow.

Little subwoofer. -SCOTT

No.

RICHARD

Like, everything's a -- This is a Bluetooth speaker right here. Oh, let's have another Bluetooth speaker.

KEVIN

You hearing stuff? They're everywhere.

SCOTT

What's wrong?

RICHARD

I'm just sick of it. I'm running out of things to play on these things.

TOM

Somebody get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?

KEVIN

I just downloaded an anger management app.

RICHARD

Okay, let me just listen to it on my phone.

Laughter

KEVIN

All right, so... While he wrestles with that, I'll tell you what it really is.

All right. -TOM

What is it?

KEVIN

I never want to drive under the influence.

RICHARD

Nor should you.

KEVIN

So whenever I leave the house, I put this right up on the dash, and it's my Sweet-a-lizer.

TOM

Sweet-a-lizer?

KEVIN

Sweet-a-lizer. As I'm driving and I'm eating the doughnuts, every like three or four, five or six, it starts going off.

RICHARD

I've seen you under the influence.

KEVIN

Yep, starts going. And you know what? It does not pick up Boston cream, though.

TOM

You know what else? It's not working. But that's not what it is.

KEVIN

Boston cream.

TOM

Not even close. Not even close. You? Whew. This is a done button.

TOGETHER

Done?

KEVIN

A dumb button?

TOM

Use it on a jobsite. Not dumb. Done. Jobsite where you got a little project going. "Okay, guys. How'd that go? Oh, done with that."

SCOTT

All done. I like it.

TOM

I get a signal. Bluetooth tells me that...

RICHARD

Then the music comes up, everyone's happy.

SCOTT

No, well... You guys, Richard... you've all seen that before.

KEVIN

Yes.

Smoke detector. -KEVIN

Bluetooth?

SCOTT

No, but it's big. And this does the same exact thing as that. 10-year battery life. Put it up. 10 years, you don't have to think about it.

KEVIN

A mini smoke detector?

SCOTT

And I'm gonna show you how cool it is. I got a can of smoke I brought with me.

KEVIN

Wow.

SCOTT

Check this out.

RICHARD

Oh, you put hair spray on it?

SCOTT

No, no. Just -- I carry it everywhere I go. A little piece of smoke.

Coughing

RICHARD

No, it's working great.

KEVIN

So, now you're dead and the house has burned down.

TOM

Great.

RICHARD

Let me put some music on.

Laughter

Alarm sounding

TOGETHER

Hey!

KEVIN

Oh! There it is!

SCOTT

Get up.

Laughter

KEVIN

Richard, this is a call I bet you get a lot. You've got vanity up in a bathroom, and the water's either not draining at all or it's draining very slowly.

RICHARD

Pretty common complaint. A lot of times, people brush their hair and a lot of hair gets down inside the drain. Underneath the sink, there's a couple of places where you can get hair and things caught -- here at the top or in the trap. Let me show you over here, actually. It'll be easier to see. This is the first place I would look. Here's the sink, and there's a thing called the pop-up assembly. The pop-up assembly -- here it is here. You'd have a lift lever. And when you did, it would let the stopper go up or down to hold water in the sink. A lot of times, what happens is these linkages loosen a little bit. So people don't realize that they don't really have a stoppage. It's just that the stopper is down so low that you think you have a stoppage.

KEVIN

It's coming up, but it's coming up just a tiny bit.

RICHARD

So you need to make sure it comes up full and then goes down full, and it's not really a stoppage. The next place to look, though, is right here. If hair gets down through that stopper, you need to take apart the pop-up assembly. Now, if you have a stoppage, you've got to be careful. When I loosen this nut, any water that's above it is gonna come out. So you put a bucket underneath. So now I loosen this, okay?

KEVIN

Yep.

RICHARD

So just pull that stopper.

KEVIN

So now this actually comes out.

RICHARD

Now, that often comes out and it is unbelievable. It's covered in hair and toothpaste and all kinds of stuff.

KEVIN

I mean, look at it. There's a ton of places for things to get hung up on it.

RICHARD

And this actually sits inside the drain stream, so that could actually catch a bunch of stuff. So you clean them all up and stuff like that. But that might not be enough. It may be that there's a stoppage down below right here.

KEVIN

And so below that drain stop, we've got the P-trap. That's a perfect place for something to settle and get hung up.

RICHARD

Yeah, a lot of times these Q-tips and ear cleaners and little pieces can sit in that trap and will just catch everything it can. So, if that's the case, they make these little handy little things that you can try to do it yourself to come down through here. With this clear trap, you can really see how, you know, this comes in here. We can try to clear it, catch it, and draw it back. And if that was hair or something, we'd be able to get it back, okay? Every house should have some version of this. This is a drain snake, okay? The way it works is it advances this way. There's all kinds of variations of it. But now we're gonna feed this down.

Just hold that against it. -KEVIN

Sure.

RICHARD

So now we come down to the trap. And now, if I turn this, see how it goes right here? If that had something, that would clear the stoppage or draw it back. This clear trap is great to see it.

KEVIN

So, in this case, we've gotten through this stop area right here.

That's cleared. -KEVIN

The P-trap is clear.

RICHARD

That's clear.

KEVIN

And you could actually keep going to the other trap.

RICHARD

Correct. And if it isn't there, that means we now go to the next place where you go. This normally goes into the wall. And now you hope that that drain snake goes down to where the stoppage might be, but there's also a vent connected to it. So you can drive yourself crazy. All of a sudden, you hear the thing. The snake's going in the wall, clanging around. And you hope that it goes this way.

KEVIN

'Cause we know the stoppage is not there.

RICHARD

If you really want to go crazy, sometimes you've got double sinks -- a sink and a sink. You try to run the snake through here, and it comes right out through the other sink.

KEVIN

We don't have any stoppages over here.

RICHARD

So let's clear that one. So, here's our snake. So now, this one has the stopper removed so it can come straight down and we know it's not in the pop-up assembly. So I can feed it in. Advance it. Might be through the trap.

KEVIN

Sort of pushing and turning simultaneously.

RICHARD

And you don't want to put too much snake out 'cause it'll splash all around and you won't have enough torque to drive it down through. All right, so here we are. We're at the -- I can feel it now -- a little resistance. See it?

KEVIN

Oh, yep. There you go. Whoa. There you go.

All right. -KEVIN

No doubt about it.

RICHARD

So now always clean your wire when you bring it back. Feed it back. Let's see.

KEVIN

Ugh!

RICHARD

What color's your hair?

KEVIN

I'm a true redhead.

RICHARD

Well, that's not my hair.

Laughter

RICHARD

Wasn't me.

MIKE

Tommy.

TOM

Hi, Mike. How are you?

MIKE

Thanks for coming.

TOM

I like your old house.

MIKE

Thank you. Built in 1926. We've been here about five months.

TOM

Brick Tutor. Very nice.

MIKE

A lot of original woodwork. A lot of character.

TOM

Yes, sure. Well, look at this.

MIKE

I believe it's an old phone booth.

TOM

I think you're right.

MIKE

Receiver here, bell up here. Still got some of the original wires.

TOM

A place to put the phone book.

Whoa. -TOM

And an outlet.

Charging your phones. -TOM

So you're updating it?

Still a phone booth. -TOM

Pretty nice.

MIKE

Let me show you the rest of the house.

TOM

All right. Lead the way.

MIKE

So, Tommy, what we want to do with this space is turn it into a more formal living room and this as a TV area.

TOM

Well,

this is a big room. -MIKE

It is. But it used to be separated by two built-in bookcases here. And we wanted a more open floor plan, so I ripped those out and found underneath no hardwood flooring.

TOM

Yeah. Was there a piece of flooring here?

MIKE

There was some flooring there. Decided to remove it to make the installation easier.

TOM

Yeah, I think I would have taken that section out, too. All right, well, I think I can help you with this. Why don't I get some tools, and we can get started?

MIKE

Great.

TOM

All right, Mike. What you have is white oak flooring right here. It's called strip flooring. It's original to the house, and it's very common. I bet you every house in the neighborhood has the same flooring. The good news is you can still buy it today. It's actually a tongue-and-groove flooring with the tongue and a groove. And when you nail it down, you nail down to the top of the tongue right here so when the groove goes together like that, it can't lift up. And then you continually nail it across the floor. And I think it fits pretty good.

MIKE

Glad to hear that. We picked it up about a week ago, and it's been sitting right in this room since.

TOM

Well, that's good. It's always good to get your flooring early so it can acclimate to the space. You want to put it in the room that you're ready to install and let it sit there for a while. All right, well, why don't we get started on this side of the room installing it? Now, we're gonna start over here in the corner and work our way across the room. Now, the piece won't fit in there, so originally, if you look, they cut it around the trim and fit it in. What I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna cut away the underside of the trim and slide our flooring underneath. To do that, I'm gonna use my oscillating saw. Use a scrap piece of wood for my gauge height and cut away. All right, our first course is in, and now we're ready to nail it. Now, when I was a kid, we used to hand-nail it with these cut nails right here, which would take some time. You take the nail and you drive it in. Drive it down so you can get down just so far. You want to be careful you don't dimple the edge of the board. Then you would take another nail, tip it on its side against the head of the nail, use it as a nail set to drive the nail in. And that sets the nail just right. Now, that's a lot of work, and it's time-consuming. So I want to speed it up. We're actually gonna use a two-inch staple that will fit in that gun right there. Now, that gun holds the staple at the right angle, so when you hit the gun with a mallet, it will drive the staple down and set it. It'll be a lot faster. You want to give it a try?

Definitely. -TOM

All right. All right, now just put them about 8 to 12 inches apart. Now we can lay out the rest of the flooring, but we want to make sure we stager our joints. All right, Mike. We're ready to install our last two pieces. Now, we were able to install three pieces on that side of the room without taking the tongue or the groove off of the board simply by driving them in between the two boards. These last two pieces I have to tip into place. So what I did is I drew a line across the bottom of the board and I followed it with my circular saw, ripping the lower part of the groove off, making it a rabbeted joint. Now, this piece has to go in first because I have to tip it in and drive it under the baseboard. What I want to do is I want to use some glue. And then once it's in place, we'll have to face nail it to hold it into position. I want to glue it on the tongue on this side. A little on the subfloor. And in the groove on this side. Okay. And now I'm gonna just try to tip it in place. All right, Mike. Your patch is done.

MIKE

Tommy, it looks great.

TOM

What I did is I sanded it once just to level it off with some 60 grit sandpaper. Next thing I think you should do is patch in your pilaster, get your trim on. Then sand the floor again with 100 or 120 grit. Then for your finish, I'd use probably three coats of poly, because this floor doesn't have a stain on it. I don't think you need a stain. Over time, that should blend right in.

MIKE

I can handle that. Thank you very much.

TOM

My pleasure.

KEVIN

Next time on "Ask This Old House"... Meteorologist Jim Cantore will show us what to look for in a home weather station.

JIM

How many times have you looked down that street and you're like, "It's pouring at that guy's house" and you're not getting a drop?

ROGER

And I'm headed to Idaho to learn all about growing potatoes.

SCOTT

I'll install multi-tasking lights that do more than brighten up this loft.