Ask This Old House

Kevin

Today on "Ask This Old House"...

Ousmane

She has a tablet, she has a music player, a fan, the light.

Scott

Everything plugs in here. I've got a brand-new way of adding wiring to a room and dress it up at the same time.

Jason

I discovered this issue right here -- a little broken board. I'm sure you noticed.

Tom

Oh, yeah, that's not very safe. That should be replaced. It's an accident waiting to happen. I'll repair this deck hazard before anyone gets hurt.

Kevin

Richard, how's the mail bag looking?

Richard

What do you think?

Kevin

Ooh, looking kind of green.

Richard

This just came in from Nick in Georgia. This is his master bathroom.

Kevin

That's next on "Ask This Old House."

Ousmane

Well, thank you, Scott, for coming to our house.

Scott

Thanks for having me. What a lovely home it is. How long have you been here?

12 years. -Scott

Wow, it's great.

Ousmane

So let me show you my daughter's room.

Scott

Wow! Look at these ceilings, how tall they are.

Ousmane

Thank you.

Scott

Cool. I like it. What's going on?

Ousmane

Well, she's a regular 12-year-old.

Scott

Yep, I have one of those, too.

Ousmane

And she has a lot of appliances.

Scott

Okay, like what?

Ousmane

She has a tablet. She has a music player. She has a fan. She has a light.

Scott

Okay.

Ousmane

And we only have one outlet.

Scott

All right. so everything plugs in here. I see there's cords, too.

On everything. Scott

All right. Well, what's -- I know there's finished space downstairs. What's above us?

Ousmane

We have an attic, but it's really, really small. I've been there once.

Scott

Okay.

Ousmane

It's insulated.

Scott

I'll take your word for that. So we can't get from down below or above. But I have a solution to get you some more power in this room. Let me grab it.

Ousmane

Wonderful.

Scott

Okay, Ousmane, let me show you what's inside your walls. This is a pretty good example of it. So there's a stud every 16 inches. To go horizontally is a challenge. Now, normally, when I'm running outlets in a room, I like to go down into the basement or up into the attic with my wire. That way there, I can go anywhere I need to go, drop down into the new outlet. However, in your situation, we don't have that access. But these vertical studs, they are tough to get through. Sometimes what we do is we notch out the drywall or the plaster, drill out the stud, and go between them, one to the next to the next -- all the way around your room so you'd have a bunch of patches and it would look -- It wouldn't look great. Another option is this surface-mounted box here. We would add it to the power source. And then we would take this raceway, go right on top of the drywall or plaster. And this raceway would go around the entire room. If we came to a doorway, we'd go up and over it. And everywhere we'd need an outlet, we drop down into it. It's an okay solution, but not the best in your case.

Ousmane

Not attractive.

Scott

So here's a new solution. This wire way gets mounted right on the wall, and it runs around the entire room. And we go up, over, down to the next outlet, up, over, down to the next outlet -- anywhere we need power, we can do it anything.

Ousmane

It's exciting, but not too beautiful right now.

Scott

No. So they give you this crown molding cover. It's plastic on the back. It snaps right in. And then it's wood crown molding on the front. It gets mounted to the wall. What do you think of that?

Ousmane

Looks beautiful.

Scott

Yeah.

Ousmane

But I hear that crown molding is difficult to install.

Scott

Normally, crown molding's is for Tommy to install. But this manufacturer really simplifies the installation, and we can get this done today.

Wonderful. -Scott

All right, cool. We'll get started by snapping a chalk line all the way around the room -- about three inches down. This will be a guide to mount our track to. We'll screw it off every three feet. With the power turned off, we're gonna drill a hole in the track to fish a wire up from the existing outlet to feed our new outlet. This will all be hidden later by the crown molding.

Clattering

Wonderful. -Scott

Well, looks like I'm hitting something. Like a cross-bracing. Probably about a foot up above the box right there.

Ousmane

Okay.

Scott

So I'm gonna have to notch that out, go around it to get into the box, but I'm a good plasterer, so... All right. Well, there's our solid piece of wood going this way. And it looks like the last guy decided to go around it. You're not supposed to do that because you can see the wire is right here. So if anything was to ever puncture that wire, it's a fire hazard. What we're required to do is channel out the wood......lay the wires into the notch... then cover both wires with a steel plate to prevent accidental damage. And now we can start running wire around the room, dropping down the wall wherever we need to add a new outlet. At the new outlet location, we fish two wires. One if the feed from the existing power. The other will send power to the next outlet on the circuit. All right, so all the plastic wire way is installed around the perimeter of the room. We went from outlet to outlet to outlet. I added four additional outlets, which will give you a total of five. You think that will be enough for your daughter?

Ousmane

I hope so. If not, we're in trouble.

Chuckles

Scott

All right. So remember I told you the crown molding would be a breeze to snap in? Look at this. So this goes up like this -- one piece. Snaps right in, right to left, real simple. When you come over here to the corner, they give you a pre-made corner, just like this. And that just snaps in like such. And it goes up there like that. What do you think?

Ousmane

Beautiful.

Scott

All right, now on this really long wall here, they don't make the pieces long enough, so we need to put in a keystone where they join together. So we make a straight cut, and we snap the keystone right in here like that.

Bingo. -Ousmane

Very nice.

Scott

So on all the corners, we have straight cuts. And all the keystones, we have straight cuts. No angles, no miters.

Ousmane

Beautiful.

Scott

Before we close this up, I want to seal these holes with some flexible putty. To make up this outlet, we tie the grounds together and use this special wire nut with a hole in the top. One wire comes through the hole and ties onto the green ground screw on the outlet. These outlets are designed for feed in, feed out. Feed in from the power supply, feed out to the next outlet. So both white wires go on the silver screws, and both black wires go on the brass screws. Over here behind the desk, we're going to install this outlet that also has two USB charging ports for tablets and phones. Okay, power is back on. Everything's working. What do you think?

Ousmane

Oh, it's amazing, Scott. Beautiful.

Scott

It looks really nice. And we had this one area right here that needs to be painted still. However, I'll take this one little area than to have to do this every 16 inches, make a hole around the entire room. Wouldn't you agree? And you get some nice crown molding out of it, too.

Ousmane

I agree. It's a nice touch. Thank you so much, Scott.

Scott

You got it.

Kevin

You know what? That's a pretty good solution for running that electrical wire all throughout that room.

Scott

It was, and it's not just for the electrical wire. You can run Internet. You can do speaker, coax for TV, and thermostat.

Kevin

Once you've that chase, right, anything can go in there.

Scott

Yeah, and that PVC chase, I was comfortable with. I've done a lot of that, but, boy, when it came into the woodwork, I was looking for some advice from you. But it was simple.

Tom

Well, when doing a crown molding, it can be a little bit overwhelming, because you don't know how to hold the crown molding in the orientation when you're cutting on the saw. There's a couple of different ways you can do the corner. You can miter each piece and put them together up against the ceiling and the wall.

Kevin

Right. In that case, you'll have a little triangular opening here, and the wire will still run behind that, around the corners, which is the fussy part.

Tom

Exactly. But in a lot of cases, people like to take a piece of crown molding, and they cope the joint. So think of this as the ceiling and the wall, and you have a piece of crown molding first. You start off with square that butts against the wall. And then you have another piece, again, that you have to miter and hold. And you cope the piece, so when you put it up, you have a miter joint that's nice and tight.

Scott

That's cool.

Tom

But you don't have a void to go through to the corner.

Kevin

So if you want to go with a coped corner, can you not use the crown as a chase?

Tom

No, you can still use it, but you'd take the square cut, and you'd just remove the corner so you have the piece that butts to the wall. But you've relieved it up on the top. So now when you take that cope piece and you put it in place, you now have a chase that will allow you to run the wire around the room.

Kevin

You got a fix for everything, don't you? So we've got a solution if the electrician is hanging the crown.

Scott

Yeah.

Kevin

And we've got a solution if the carpenter is hanging the crown.

Absolutely. -Kevin

Good information, guys. Richard, how's the mail bag looking?

Richard

What do you think?

Kevin

Ooh, looking kind of green.

Richard

This just came in from Nick in Georgia. He doesn't know what to do. This is his shower stall in his master bathroom.

Kevin

Look at that. It's all streaky. It looks kind of green and nasty.

Richard

What do you think of that one?

Kevin

Ah, yeah, that thing needs a good scrubbing or maybe even a tear-out.

Richard

So he is confused. He doesn't know what's causing it. What do you think it is?

Kevin

Oh, well, I see streaks like that in a shower, I'm thinking hard water?

Richard

Exactly wrong. You were 50% off.

Kevin

You set me up.

Richard

Well, you know, any time I see that, it suggests that it's actually soft water.

Kevin

What?

Richard

Not hard. So when we think about water, it falls down onto the earth, and now it has to go down through the earth's crust. And when it does, it will pick up whatever minerals are in that core.

Kevin

Right.

Richard

Okay, so some minerals will cause things to go from the neutral, which is a pH level of 7, to be more alkali, which would be 7, 8, 9. That's hard water. That is all over the country. That's where the biggest issue -- Hard water, it's hard to make water -- you know, suds foam when you shower.

Kevin

And when it runs through your pipes, you get buildup. Those minerals are basically being left behind.

Richard

It's calcium. It's magnesium. It's the regular ones. But there are some parts of the country, maybe in Georgia, where the water goes down through, and it might pick up other minerals. It might be lead. It might be sulfur. Now, that will turn that water to the left of neutral...

Below 7. -Richard

...which is 7, 6, 5. When that happens, it can actually eat up copper. Now, this is copper. The universal material -- it's perfect. It's nonferrous.

Kevin

Nonferrous meaning no iron, so it's never gonna rust.

Richard

You would think it would be impervious. But in this example, if we took an acidic solution -- This is vinegar and common salt.

Kevin

Yep.

Richard

And we put this elbow into water for 45 minutes and left it out for 45 minutes in the air.

Kevin

Whoa!

Richard

Look what happens. It's eating it on the outside, and also on the inside.

Kevin

And it's literally eating away at that copper right there?

Richard

That's right. It's aggressive.

Kevin

The green is what, coming out through his water now?

Richard

Right. So in that example, he is -- The water's coming out of the shower head. Water is eating little parts of the copper pipes on the inside, coming off and bouncing off him, and then going back on the shower stall.

Kevin

You think he's green?

Richard

He's probably green. You know, it also makes me suggest that this explains what happened to poor Lady Liberty.

Kevin

Oh, look at this.

Richard

When she came from France, she was bright copper like this. And over all those years of acid rain slightly making that copper turn green, and it's slightly getting rotted away.

Kevin

So if this is eating away at the pipe, I mean, that's a problem. I mean, when you have hard water, you're not really worried about anything other than the fact that you can't make suds.

Richard

That's right.

Kevin

But if you're saying that soft water will literally eat away at the copper, are you concerned that this pipe's gonna eventually fail and, I mean, I guess you have to fix them.

Richard

Over time, yeah. I mean, it's aggressive enough that it's gonna eat this material that you wouldn't think would be able to be eaten.

Kevin

So when you want to fix hard water, you put in a water softener. Do they have a water hardener?

Richard

It's actually not called a water hardener. It's actually an acid neutralization tank. Instead of putting salt inside what you do into a softener, you're actually gonna fill this with white marble limestone. Limestone versus salt. That water will come through, spend enough time on that medium to get it to move from 6 to 7, to get near neutral and stop the aggressive behavior.

Kevin

Fascinating. Well, let's hope that the answer gets to him fast enough before he is actually green.

Both laugh

Tom

Hi, Jason?

Jason

Hi, Tom. I'm glad you made it.

Tom

You wrote me a note about a problem you have.

Jason

Yeah, so I'll take you up. So it's actually right here.

Tom

Front porch.

Jason

The front porch is something since I moved in, I've wanted to sand and repaint it. But I discovered this issue right here -- a little broken board. I'm sure you noticed.

Tom

Oh, yeah, that's not very safe. That should be replaced. Well, this is 1x4 fir decking. Very common in old houses, and it's still used today. And one of the problems with this is it runs from front to back, but it actually runs under the toe kick here.

Jason

Right.

Tom

And under the railing wall right there. These are one pieces. Now, I could simply cut the board right here on top of the joists that run this way and insert a piece. But I'm not really a fan of putting a little piece in front of the door.

Jason

Neither am I.

Tom

So what I want to do is I want to take this piece out and replace it with a new one. Now, it's gonna be easy to get the piece out. It's gonna be challenging to get the new one in. You up for doing some work?

Jason

Sounds good. Let's do it.

Tom

All right. I'll get some tools.

Jason

Great.

Tom

All right, Jason, now, this is actually pretty easy. The main thing is I want to try to pull this board out without damaging each board on each side. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a cat's paw and try to get underneath the nailhead to pull it out. I can't grab it, so I'm gonna take these pliers right here, see if I can get it with these. There it is. There's one. All right, that's an 8 penny finish nail. Now we'll get the next one. Okay, so now what I want to do is see if I can get these pliers on this nail here also. Yeah. Good. Now I want to go down between the crack here and get underneath the board, see if I can pry it up. Bouncing right up. Nice. Look at that. All right, so now we got to pry this end up, see if we can get it out from under the wall. Yeah, there. See? That board's broken. Now there's a piece under there. Let's see if I can get that out. There's one. There it is. There's the other one. All right, I went to the lumber yard and I picked up a piece of 1x4, and I cut it to the length to match the rest of the boards. Now let me show you what we have here. Getting this board in is gonna be a little bit tricky, but on each end, you want to make sure that you have something to hold the ends up. Now, against the house, we have a 2x4, and that's a ledger, and it's attached to the house. So when the deck board goes in, you can slide it under the riser like that and nail it, and the board won't collapse down.

Jason

Right.

Tom

This end, there isn't a ledger that we can see. There's actually a beam that's way under here. Okay? Now, the problem is is getting this board that's cut to the length of the rest of them in on top of that beam and down onto the ledger over there. Can't do it. I have to get this up. Now, I could try getting it on an angle like this, getting under the threshold, trying to get it in here like this. It's not gonna go. Can't do it. So I have to cut this board short enough so that you don't see the joint on each side, and I also have to create a shelf for this end to sit on. To create a shelf, I'm gonna take an old deck board right here, the one we cut up. And I'm gonna fasten it to each side of the opening. Screw it to this deck board and this deck board, and that gives us a shelf to rest the board on.

Jason

Brilliant.

Tom

Okay, I'm gonna put some construction adhesive on the top of the board so it'll stick to the underside of the deck boards. Okay. So now I'm gonna take the board and screw it to the deck boards. Hold it up underneath. Just like that. Now to hold it into place for the glue to dry, I'm gonna screw it down. Okay, there's one. All right, now we're ready to cut the board to length. So what I want to do is I want to measure up on top of the ledger but to the siding of the sheathing of the house underneath the toe kick. Take the tape, run it across the floor, and measure. 71 5/8. That's what I want to cut the board. I run some construction adhesive under each end. All right, now let's hope it fits.

Jason

All right.

Tom

Slide it in on that end. Push it tight against the house. Drop it down. There we go.

Jason

All right, it fits.

Tom

So now what I want to do is I want to slide the board down just a little bit to get it underneath the wall, so when you look down, you won't see a joint. And now I'll just nail it in place with some 8 penny finish nails. All right, your new deck board is in, and you now have a nice, safe deck.

Jason

Looks great.

Tom

Okay, now if you noticed, I set the nails down just a little bit below the top of the board. And if you're gonna sand this deck, I would recommend you take a nail set and push the nails down. So when you sand this deck, that nailhead won't rip the paper.

Jason

Makes sense.

Tom

All right? So I think you're all set.

Jason

Thank you very much. I really appreciate the help.

Tom

It was my pleasure, and I'm glad I could help.

Kevin

Pretty good fix, Tommy, fitting that long board in that tight spot there. Although on one side, you were hanging it off of the ledger, which is attached to the house. That's pretty strong.

Tom

Exactly.

Kevin

On the other side, you just simply screw that little board underneath there. Are you worried about someone stepping on that end and popping that off?

Tom

Not really. First of all, that little board is glued and screwed to the piece underneath. And there's a joist probably about 12 inches out. So the only way you're gonna put pressure on that and even have a chance of making it, you have to go up against the wall and really jump on it. It's still not gonna go anywhere.

Kevin

Yeah. And the deck's not going anywhere, right? I mean, that thing's been there for a long time. It looked like it was in pretty decent shape except for a paint job.

Tom

It's probably original to the house. I mean, I used a piece of straight-grain fir. It'll last a long time. That deck was covered with a roof and it had multiple layers of paint on it. So that's not going anywhere. You have to worry about a deck when it's out in the sun and the weather. That will beat it up.

Kevin

Perfect. So it's in good condition, and it's got a lot more years to give. Just like you.

Tom

Hey!

Kevin

All right. Keep your letters and your e-mails coming, 'cause we'd love to hear from you. So until next time, I'm Kevin O'Connor.

Tom

And I'm Tom Silva.

Kevin

For "Ask This Old House."

Tom

Let's just hope you have as many as I do.

Kevin

Doubt it. Next time on "Ask This Old House"...

Richard

I'll show you a high-tech way to make a forced-air heating and cooling system comfortable.

Woman

We have this new window that we had put in over here, and unfortunately the contractor left us with a little bit of a mess down here.

Tom

Sooner or later, every homeowner is gonna have to patch a wall. Well, I'm gonna show you some pointers on how to do it right.

Kevin

And it's tall, plastic, with a motor. What is it?