i love you, sonia. i love you so much. i love you too. do you? yeah. ♪ thank you for the days ♪ those endless days, those sacred days you gave me ♪ ♪ i'm thinking of the days ♪ ♪ i won't forget a single day, believe me ♪ ♪ i bless the light ♪ i bless the light that shines on you, believe me. ♪ ( theme music playing )

today, the front yard takes shape, as a new driveway goes in. that's a whole lot of asphalt. that's a big driveway. and we'll get some old pipes out of the way, to make room in our new kitchen. got it? attaboy. kevin: and also... kevin, this is one of my favorite places in the whole world. this is a stone yard, where both professionals and homeowners can come to pick out the things they need to build their hardscaping projects. and i'm going to build a new railing for this old porch.

and we'll ask, "what is it?" these are optic enhancers. you pop them in like this, and i can do unbelievable close work. i can actually see what time it is. kevin: you don't look like a dork at all. so stick around. kevin: you don't look like a dork at all. throw on a fresh coat. and finish with a big splash of style. hce dhothmeepot is prd ou t pp "thiorold house" and do-it-yourselfers everywhere. man! what we need is some elbow grease. [ laughs ] yeah, you can -- are you kidding me? gmc -- lending "this old house" a helping hand since 2002. when the unexpected happens, state farm is there to get your old house to a better state.

retailer of hardwood flooring. their wide selection includes bellawood prefinished, bamboo, laminate, and vinyl plank flooring. lumber liquidators is proud to sponsor "this old house." there are some big changes happening today to the front of our house. now, this used to be a u-shaped driveway with a tree in the middle. the tree is gone, and that driveway has become, well, nothing more than a parking lot for all the trucks and, unfortunately, a big mud puddle. but today, all of that changes. this area gets regraded, and we're going to put down a base coat for a new asphalt driveway. and here on the front of the house, well, we've stripped off all the old clapboards and we went right down to the original pine planking, and we're starting to rebuild that, and today we've gotten to the point where we're going to start putting up the new claps. tommy, looks like you are already underway. what are we putting up? we're actually using straight-grain red cedar

half by six siding with a four-inch to-the-weather reveal. okay, and it's already primed? already primed on six sides, and we'll have to obviously prime all the cuts. but i'm getting ready over here for the starter course. okay, so we're going to start on the side wall here. now, we've got ourselves an existing addition that we haven't touched, not going to do work here, but we do have this new entryway that you built us. exactly. now, we have our wall all prepped. this is 15-pound felt paper. underneath that is an air barrier. now, the felt paper acts as a water barrier. and then i added these eighth-inch filler strips right here that are placed on every one of the studs, and what that does, that allows air to circulate behind the siding, so if any condensation should form on the back side of the siding, it will dry out. great, okay. so the first thing i want to do is i want to take a piece of clapboard that i have ripped down, and i'll place it right down here at the bottom, and i'm going to tack it in place. and what's this for? this is just a filler to basically kick out the bottom coursing of the clapboards.

this is all a part of the starter course process? it's all a part of it. all right, let's get a length for our first piece. and i have 126 5/16. all right, let's get that cut. tom: now i want to prime this raw edge because we just removed our primer, so i'll just put a coat right on there. all right. now, before we install our first piece, i want to run a bead of caulking right here in the corner to seal this joint nice and tight against any water getting behind that joint. a little there, and we'll put some caulking down here also.

okay, now i'll take the clapboard, put it into position, and i'll line the bottom of this clapboard up with the bottom of this clapboard up. put it into position. and i'll just tack it. next thing i want to do is i want to measure down from my trim above to the top of the clapboard that i just installed, and that's 89 1/4, kevin. i'm good right there. now i'll just tack this in place. okay, so we know it's level and it's lined up with the course on the existing building. right. now, the next thing we need to do is i want to make sure that the coursing on our new addition lines up with the coursing on the existing addition. now, i could take my tape measure out and i could measure all the courses and then transfer the marks to there, but i want to put the marks on the wall once and don't take any more measurements.

the way i do that is i take one of the pieces of wood that i ripped off a piece of clapboard, and i actually line it up with the bottom edge of our building right here. keep it even. and now i just take my pencil and i reference off the bottom of each course and i transfer it to my stick. so this is what you guys call a story pole. a story pole. no measurements necessary. no measurements, and if i were to measure each one of these rows, they could be off an eighth of an inch. so i don't want to mess with wrong measurements. okay, now, all i need to do now is transfer that measurement over to here, but what i don't want to do is i don't want to put a line here and then put another measurement and then a line and then so on down the line. i want to basically take our measurements and transfer the measurements from the top of this clapboard now, and i'm going to put my marks on my filler strip, transfer them here. here. here.

all the way up the wall. and i'll do the same thing on the other end. and i'll put another coursing on here. what we're going to do is we're going to snap a chalk line between the two reference points. you lined up? yep. now we'll just move it right up. good. good. good. all right, now let's take a measurement on the bottom and the top to see if they're all the same length. i've got 126 5/16. okay. 126 5/16. all right. now, they're all the same. we can cut... one, two, three, four, five, six, seven pieces all the same length.

tom: tap them all to me. [ tapping ] little more -- right -- easy. okay, hold it right there. all right, we've got them squared on the other end and even, so now i want to make sure that i'm tight to my saw, lined up, and now i'm going to make my cut. slide it to you just a little kevin, right there. okay. okay, now, to save some time, i'm going to stand them up on edge like this and i'm going to prime them all at once. now we want to push the clapboard into our wet bead of caulking, line the top of the clapboard up with our chalk line, and tack the bottom.

now, you notice we've put this row of clapboard right here underneath this piece of felt paper. this piece of felt paper is going to act like a piece of flashing so that if any water should migrate between the joints of the clapboard up here and the trim, run down the wall, it will actually exit on top of this piece of clapboard right here. so what we need to do now is place this clapboard into position, move it up where it belongs, right on your line. kevin: good. it's hitting something under the window there. okay, right there. now i'll nail that in place. okay, now the next thing i want to do is i actually want to cut this off even with the bottom of the clapboard,

so i'm going to take my knife and just score the felt paper, being careful not to cut the clapboard below. okay. now, the bottom of this clapboard and these sides of the window are flashed. good. wow, tommy, this family room addition is amazing! it's really nice. 20 by 20, cathedral ceiling -- they will never leave here. i know. but look at the difference when we opened up this old side wall. we tied it right into the kitchen. really nice. so what's in here? over there is a sitting area, right here is the island. now, the sink's going to be in the island. all right, well, you told me to bring this pipe cutter, so there must be some technical issues to talk about. i'm surprised you actually listened. for once. now, right here in the middle of the wall, we're going to have the range and the hood, and i need to vent the hood to the outside,

so the issue is, it's a post and beam building. i can't go up. i'm going to have to go down. and it's also a bathroom right above us, too, right? that's right, so i'm going to use this eight-inch pipe. the other issue is this pipe right here for the toilet upstairs in the bathroom. i'm going to hide that. what i want to do is i'm going to build this wall out four inches, so that'll give me a nice, straight wall to hang the cabinets on. four inches would be right about here. okay, so now the top cabinets would come out to about there, still showing some of that pipe, so what i'm going to do is i'm going to make a fake beam to look like that that will hide the pipe. make it go away. beautiful. so, now, remember the ceiling on this part of the kitchen? it was plastered and it was real low. way low. so it hid this beautiful plumbing job right here. we didn't do that. so what i need to do is i need to get rid of the water lines and the waste line, because we want to get the look of the kitchen that's over here with these beams and mimic it over here.

all right. well, looking at this tub, the tub can't move, but we can do something about this drain. this is a copper trap and has a clean-out that sticks way down. if we change that to pvc, to a trap that doesn't have a clean-out, we could get it up as high as about there, so i could save you about an 1 1/2 inch, maybe, getting it up. that'd be perfect. and when we redo it, we could get it right tight to the joist right there. i really would like that, right tight to the joist. all right. now, the reason i told you to bring the pipe cutter is because i'm looking at this and i'm saying, i think it might be easier if we cut this section out and replace it. you know, it sounds so dramatic when you say that, but it's actually the smarter way to play it. by the time we got up inside here and modified this poured lead joint to try and make the new connection, it would be smarter to just get rid of it all and change it to pvc. okay, great, so let's cut it out. all right. this tool is made for cutting cast iron pipe. it's a chain that has some blades in it. they're like cutting wheels, aren't they? that's right. so we wrap it around, and we'll squeeze it so tight -- squeeze it in here. you gave me the hard end. you always give me the hard end.

watch your fingers. okay. there we go. put it right in there. got it. okay, good. let's put some glasses on. adam, while we cut this cast iron, why don't you get started on the copper, all right? okay, so now we're just going to squeeze this. good old-fashioned heavy duty cast iron. yes, it is. i'm always amazed that these things cut the pipe nice and clean. [ snap ] ooh! look at that! that beats using a chisel. sure does. nice. okay, so that's one cut. now we need a few more cuts to get this piece down. and one cut here in the upstairs bathroom, there it is. good. hopefully this is our last cut.

all right. watch out for that flange at the top. okay. all right, can that wiggle out of there, adam? yeah, baby. got it? that-a-boy. all right, tommy, with these pipes out of the way, you can now build your new wall. all right, rich, thanks a lot. kevin: roger, this is a big change to our front yard. no longer a mud pit, and in a couple of hours, what, a new asphalt driveway? well, first of all, you've got to remember the guys did all the prep work. they took out the bad soil, they've got a foot of compacted gravel in here, so we have a great base for our driveway. all right, so, for you, it's really all about water management, right? because we're going to get thousands of gallons of rainwater falling on this driveway. yep, so we need to grade the driveway, and in order to do that, we have certain fixed points we have to meet.

this is our starting point right here. here, so this is high point and starting point. right, so we come down, and we talked about grades and people have a hard time understanding what we're talking about, so i thought i'd lay it out really simple for you. on this first stake, this bottom of this grade tape is the exact same height as the sidewalk. so, right now, this level right here you're saying is almost four or five inches below the sidewalk. right, but remember, we're going to have three inches of asphalt here, so that's going to bring us right to there. so we've already got two inches of pitch coming down this way. the water's starting to work its way down. yeah, and i can see you've got gray and red pretty much on all of these stakes. right, now, here you notice we even dropped a little more, so that's going to keep that water coming this way. yeah, all right. what we've also done is we've raised this side up. you can see there's not as much difference between the gray and the red here as there was over there. that makes the water start to go that way. feels like you're bringing the water to the house, though. where do you want it to all end up? ultimately, it's just going to travel right down and go right out underneath the beech tree. all right. here, try this. this will show you where it's going to go.

just roll it in this direction? go right ahead. you know i'm a pretty mean bocce player, huh? picking up speed and going right -- look at that. travels right there. so this mark right here is sort of the low point of this whole driveway? that's right. again, the grade mark is the same height as that sidewalk right there, and this is how much drop we have at this point right here. this is like 14 or 15 inches from the sidewalk out front. and that's what we need to carry the water all the way around this driveway. okay, so once this is all graded off, where do we go from there? we're ready for base coat. kevin, this is some of the equipment they're going to need to put down the base coat. this is a paver. the asphalt will get dumped into that hopper and then spread out the back. we're going to have a roller and a big truck full of asphalt. sure beats shovels and rakes. roger: now, this is our base coat. it has a 3/4-inch stone and liquid asphalt in it, and you can see how hot it its. what's happening now is they're going to feed that into the paver. he's going to go around and lay it down at just the right thickness for us. kevin, the first thing he does is take the wing out to the width that he wants so that he can make one pass

and cover this side of the driveway. after that, he augers out this asphalt into the wing, and finally, he sets the depth that he wants that to be using the crank in the back. now he's all ready to pave. kevin: roger, we're already on our second load. how many tons of asphalt are you guys putting down? kevin, we're going to use 32 ton of base and 34 ton of finish, for a total of 66 ton. that's a lot of asphalt. it's a big driveway. really important to get good compaction on our base coat, because that's what gives it its strength. and once it's packed up really well, then we can put our finish coat right on top. kevin, this is the second coat going on top of the first coat. now, the first coat had large 3/4-inch stone on it. this here is made up of 3/8 stone. okay, and so what's the effect of that? when that's compacted, it's going to be a really smooth surface, and that's what you see

on most driveways. with the driveway done, we're going to wait four or five weeks for the oil to dry out on the surface, and then we're going to put down what's called a "rustic surface." we're going to come in and we're going to put a layer of liquid asphalt, and then on top of this we're going to add this 3/8 stone about a half an inch thick, and then they'll run over it with a rubber tire machine and press it right down into the asphalt. so the stone's going to be permanently in the driveway. it's just going to sort of give the look of a stone driveway. it is, and you can just imagine that all the way through this driveway. you know what? for a 300-year-old house like ours, i think that's a much more appropriate look than the blacktop. i think that's really going to work well. nice job, roger. hey, richard, you in here? richard: yes, sir. i hear you're making some pretty good progress with the rough-in plumbing? we are well underway, getting rid of a lot of that old cast iron, a lot of the old copper. we're running our pvc. but here on the first floor, kevin,

we have an interesting little room right here. it has a washer and dryer and a solo toilet, no sink. not really what the homeowners want. it's not in vogue anymore, so we're actually going to get rid of the toilet right here, make it a proper laundry room. yeah, okay. we still need a half bath here on the first floor. right, and they wanted it off of this new entryway that we built them, which sort of makes sense to me. it's kind of a generous mud room. we're going to have the kids' lockers up against this wall, and then a nice dedicated room for the toilet and the sink. right, so here we can put our toilet right here, our lavatory right here. now, any plumbing fixture, we can place them anywhere we want. the tricky part is to make them be drained properly and to be vented properly. we need both. absolutely. let me show you sort of some of the basic rules of plumbing over here. i love your rules. okay. so, now, any plumbing system starts with a main drain that has to leave through the foundation of the building out to the sewer septic system, has to be with pitch, and has a clean-out. that same full-size pipe has to turn and go straight up through the roof. now, this pipe that you just drew is actually

this pipe right here. used to be cast iron. you took it out and now it's three-inch pvc. that's right. all right, so we have two floors -- second floor and first floor. right above you we have a bathroom group. we have the toilet drain right there, we have a drain for the tub, and there's its trap, and we have a lavatory trap right here off the stack. these plumbing fixtures are actually vented utilizing the stack, so everything from this point and above on this system is a vent now. all the air goes up through the roof. everything from here below is a drain. so this is actually just a drain when i'm looking at it on this floor, not a vent. correct. now, remember, every fixture has to be properly drained and vented. so we've got an issue with this bath. so if all we had was that bathroom upstairs, end of story. but we don't. but as we add fixtures down here on the first floor, i want to add a drain for a toilet. well, that is no longer vented right here. let me show you. so we're putting a toilet in here, and, like you said, locating it is the easy part, but making sure they're drained and vented properly is the hard part.

so here's the flange for the toilet, three-inch pipe goes down, that's drained, but it's not vented. so, now, the code allows us to do a thing called a "wet vent," and it means that we would have a three-inch by two-inch y-fitting that would come over here. now, at this point, it's going to serve as the drain for the lavatory trap, which is going to be right here, and also the vent for the toilet. so let me get this straight. the water from the lavatory comes down, uses this pipe, but the air needed for the toilets and the vent goes the other way, so hence the wet vent. it's the only time in a plumbing system you're going to use a pipe for both the drain and the vent. but we still have a lavatory and we still have this thing that has to vent to the outside air. so the question is, what do i do with this vent pipe? so i could take this two-inch full-size vent and i could work it way up into the roof right here and i could go out through the roof, but there's also rules about putting that vent near an operable window, which there is right here. plus, you want it to look nice, right? 'cause a lot of people are going to be coming and going from this door, and you don't want to see a pipe sticking right outside. and any time you have a penetration, there's also a chance of a leak, so we're actually going to run this two-inch vent

back into this wall and back over to this point. oh, so not this guy, because the three-inch is now a drain, a new vent that you put in. absolutely, so the question is is where do i tie that in? here's that drain for the toilet. we're going to branch off right here. here's our trap for the lavatory. here's that two-inch vent. yeah. well, i can't bring it in anywhere right here. because it's a drain. so we have to run this all the way up to a point above the highest fixture right here. a little bypass where it can vent. and that's the same for any plumbing group down here that we want to add and properly vent. you guys are so persnickety, you plumbers. so now we're going to bring all that back through. i just have to connect this vent upstairs. let me show you. so, kevin, up here on the second floor is the bathroom that we weren't going to touch. [ laughs ] [ laughs ] but we did. so you can see this lavatory actually is the highest fixture in the building, so here's the drain for that, and so anything above this point is a vent stack -- and anything below is a drain,

and that's that three-inch pvc that you put in in replacing the cast iron. that's right. so here is our two-inch that comes up as a wet vent from our first floor half bath. that two-inch runs behind the stud right here. you can see where it comes right back into the vent stack right there, and now we're legal. we always have to enter about six inches above the highest fixture, so anywhere in here. so anywhere in there is legally a vent, so that's all set. that's right. so we tied into the old cast iron, we go out to through the roof, and that vents to atmosphere, so we're perfect. so now all we have to do is tie in these fixtures to the existing plumbing. that's right, and block this off so the plumbing disappears, just like they're trying to do down in the kitchen. so, kevin, down here in the kitchen underneath the bathtub, it was pretty hard to hide those original pipes because they were copper pipes that stuck way down, and you can see the trap itself had a clean-out on it. you can see adam's actually run new pvc right here with a trap with no clean-out, pushed it as high as he could get it, and tommy gets what he's been working towards, and that's a way to hide this and put this fake beam

right there over all of that. let's have a look at that. oh, yeah, that's going to look great. you're never going to know there's plumbing beneath there. nice job. it was a good day. it's actually good to start rebuilding something. you've got to do it at some point. that's right. so, until next time, i'm kevin o'connor. and i'm rich trethewey. for "this old house." so is it a new old beam, or... it's an old new beam. oh. are you sure? kevin: coming up next time on "this old house"... today we'll build a new surround for our old front door. first of all, we have some rot, not only in the threshold to deal with, but look at the jamb and the trim on this side. look at that. and we're going to try to save our american beech tree. man: this is known as a deep root needle, and it's used for injecting liquid fertilizer. kevin: and we'll see what the design team has in store for our house. that's next time on "this old house." with your own two hands --

the original power tools. the home depot is proud to support "this old house" and do-it-yourselfers everywhere. it's a parade float. can we lose the parade float? thank you. gmc. lending "this old house" a helping hand since 2002. when the unexpected happens, state farm is there to get your old house to a better state. retailer of hardwood flooring. their wide selection includes bellawood prefinished, bamboo, laminate, and vinyl plank flooring. lumber liquidators is proud to sponsor "this old house." where you can watch entire episodes any time.

tune in on video.pbs.org. this old house magazine, the companion to the television series, provides advice from our experts that you've come to know. you can use your credit card to order 10 monthly issues for $10. just call 1-800-221-5900. i'm pat hunt. i'm in the wood flooring business. wherever you go, there's wood -- where i am, it's just surrounded by wood, it's everywhere. and i love it, you know. we try to be a one-stop shop, really take a customer -- whether it be a designer or a homeowner or a contractor -- and find the tree, you know, turn it into flooring, and then find their particular cut of wood, grade of wood, whether it be rustic or elegant.

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one of the things i like most about my business is the relationship aspect of it. dealing with gentlemen and good people who make good decisions and are honest and have integrity, and if there's a problem, that they'll step up. usually don't know what people are really like until there's some sort of problem or a little bump in the road. and getting through those together is the important part. i think that's what makes businesses successful, is just having relationships with good people. it's pretty simple.