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Short filmTranscript
00:00It was affected by Hurricane Helene.
00:02And I hear you're helping us out with Paul's vanity top.
00:04We are. We're going to build a concrete vanity with an integral sink.
00:08So Jen, welcome to the UMass Extension Soil and Plant Nutrient Testing Lab.
00:12You don't know how excited I am to be here.
00:30Hey there, I'm Kevin O'Connor and welcome back to This Old House here in Western North Carolina.
00:48One of our homeowners, Maya, is starting to think about furnishing her renovated home and she is partial to antiques.
00:55Which means in this area, you come here.
00:58The Antique Tobacco Barn has been an institution in this part of North Carolina.
01:02And we wanted to learn more about the business and what Maya is shopping for.
01:06Brittany, you've got quite the operation here.
01:08This place is gigantic.
01:10What is the history?
01:11So this, I mean, it's got a pretty lengthy history.
01:14But the last thing it did before it does what it does right now is it was a tobacco auction house.
01:20And in the off season, the families would trickle in their antiques.
01:24And then as the industry started to fade, we just have been strictly antiques now for 40 years.
01:3040 years of antiques.
01:31That's right. It's the 40th year this year.
01:33All right.
01:34You're not unfamiliar to flooding because the river is right next door.
01:37That's right.
01:38You know, we follow the river level quite closely.
01:40And so we recognized that this was going to be an issue before Helene had hit us.
01:44And we spent three days just getting box truck after box truck out of the building.
01:47We did everything that we could.
01:48And then the storm hit and it was just so much more than we could have possibly prepared for.
01:53How bad in terms of?
01:55Total loss.
01:56Total loss.
01:57Total loss.
01:58Well, you are definitely back.
01:59I mean, it looks fantastic.
02:01And I know one person who showed up is our Maya.
02:03That's right.
02:04Have you seen her around somewhere?
02:05I think I saw her maybe down that way.
02:06Go find her.
02:08Maya, I was told I would find you here.
02:11Hello.
02:12How are you?
02:13I'm well.
02:14I hope you are.
02:15I am too.
02:17Are you in heaven?
02:18Is this your kind of thing?
02:19I'm in absolute heaven.
02:20Big antiquary.
02:21Oh, really?
02:22Forever?
02:23Well, I moved to Missouri about 12 years ago and I just, I got so homesick that I started
02:28finding things that reminded me of my grandparents and parents and just been a collector ever since.
02:33So you go around and something that might have been in their house or might have reminded
02:36you do something in your house, you pluck it and you make it yours.
02:38Yes, exactly.
02:39That's awesome.
02:40All right.
02:41Speaking of making it yours, is this the piece you're looking for?
02:44No, not this.
02:45I'm looking for a table for the kitchen.
02:47Have you got a spot?
02:48Have you figured something out?
02:49Yes, I think so.
02:50Will you take me?
02:51Yes.
02:52Let's go.
02:53Nice.
02:54And this is it.
02:55That's the table, huh?
02:56This is the table.
02:57Ah, so what's this style and vintage?
03:00It's mid-century modern Formica, probably late 50s, early 60s.
03:05And why this one?
03:06Well, I've always been a big fan of this style.
03:08My grandparents used to have one.
03:10It was their main table and we spend all of our holidays sitting around it eating.
03:16So this really brings back memories.
03:17Yes, absolutely.
03:18Sharing a meal, breaking bread at something like this.
03:20Yes.
03:21Oh, that's awesome.
03:22So this is a keeper.
03:23This is a keeper.
03:24This has got to be exciting.
03:26It's sort of a turning point in the project that you can now start thinking about furnishing
03:30it and getting back into the house.
03:31Absolutely.
03:32I've been thinking about decorating and everything since before everything happened.
03:37That's true.
03:38You've always been fast on that track.
03:39All right.
03:40So this one's going home with you.
03:41Do you need chairs?
03:42Is that something that comes with?
03:43Yes, definitely need chairs, but that's the thrill of the hunt.
03:46Well, we can't wait to get you back in and...
03:49Put the old Formica table in.
03:50Yay.
03:56After Hurricane Helene brought record flooding to Western North Carolina, some homeowners
04:01like Jim and Allie were concerned about the health of their soil.
04:05So I called in the county's local horticultural extension agent, Allison Arnold, to help determine
04:11if their yard would be fit for planting.
04:13On any project, I always recommend soil testing just to know what you're working with,
04:18what the composition is, then you have a baseline, right?
04:20Absolutely.
04:21We always recommend soil testing, new sites, new garden, whatever that is.
04:26Especially in a flood event like this, we don't really know how the soil's been impacted.
04:31We'll get information that'll help us know how to go forward with that.
04:35So in order to do that, we have a soil probe and a clean bucket.
04:39Okay.
04:40And we're basically wanting to insert this down into the soil four to six inches.
04:46In an area like we have here, you're basically wanting to take 10 to 12 samples.
04:52We're really looking for about a cup of soil in the end.
04:55There we go.
04:56Nice.
04:57So you can see there's some root debris in there.
04:59Mm-hmm.
05:00And so when you take the final sample, you could even like sift through it to pull all the roots out.
05:04Exactly.
05:05So it's really important to get a diversity of samples.
05:07So I'll go around and take samples here to get that sample complete.
05:11And then I'm going to mail them to the state lab in Raleigh.
05:14Great.
05:15And so based off those results, we'll get a recipe to start the amending.
05:18Absolutely.
05:19And we'll work together to make that happen.
05:21Yes.
05:22Awesome.
05:24While Allison sent these samples to the state lab in Raleigh, I headed home to the Massachusetts
05:29state lab to see firsthand how soil fertility tests are performed.
05:34So Jen, welcome to the UMass Extension soil and plant nutrient testing lab.
05:39You don't know how excited I am to be here.
05:41For years and years, I've been telling homeowners, get your soil tested, know what you're working with.
05:46So tell us why it's important for testing.
05:49Yeah, absolutely.
05:50When we're talking about testing our soil for fertility, we're looking for things like,
05:54is this soil over fertilized?
05:56Is it under fertilized?
05:57Either one of those things can be a problem for our gardens and landscapes.
06:00The first step is mail.
06:01We're pretty old school in here.
06:02If you want a routine soil sample, which is going to be things like your soil pH, your
06:06phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, you're going to go into this bin here.
06:11Okay.
06:12And we just need about one cup of soil to do that test.
06:14Okay.
06:15If you also want to add on organic matter, then you're going to go over here.
06:19So it's $20 for a routine sample, $6 to add organic matter onto that.
06:23So for $26, you get a full fertility analysis and it'll put you in a good spot.
06:29Absolutely.
06:30Okay.
06:31So our next step, we're going to go into our drying ovens.
06:35So we put samples in here overnight at around 95 Fahrenheit.
06:38We don't want them too hot at this point, but what we want to do is get all of the water out of the soil samples.
06:44Because we don't want to measure water, we want to measure what's actually in your soil.
06:48Okay.
06:49I see all the different colors here.
06:50So the different colors can tell us about things like the soil type and where it came from,
06:54or even things like how much organic matter do the different soils have in them.
06:57Okay.
07:00So after we've got the soil all dried out, every single sample is hand sieved.
07:03That gets out any rocks or other debris like plastic or glass that might be in the sample.
07:08It also gets it nice and small and uniform, and that helps us to get a really accurate and precise analysis.
07:14So Jen, the next thing that we're going to do after we've sieved and dispensed the soils is we're going to bring them over here to analyze them for pH.
07:24Now why is pH so important?
07:26As pH starts to increase and get closer to about 6.5, we're going to see that our plant nutrients become more available.
07:32So available to the plant, meaning when it reaches 6.5, it could suck it up like a straw.
07:38Exactly.
07:39Okay.
07:40This machine does two things.
07:42It measures pH, which determines how acidic or basic the soil is, and it recommends how to get the soil into an ideal range.
07:51You do that by adding amendments like lime to raise the pH or sulfur to lower the pH.
07:58From there, another portion of the soil sample is filtered with special chemical solutions to prepare it for nutrient extraction,
08:05which will help guide fertilizer amendment recommendations.
08:09Next, we're going to take this over for our first measurement of phosphorus.
08:13And I have my instrument already going.
08:15Okay.
08:16This is flow injection analysis.
08:18Phosphorus is actually so important, we measure it twice.
08:21Once on this instrument and a second time on another instrument.
08:24So if you have the optimal level of phosphorus, you're going to have a strong root system and an overall healthy plant.
08:29Exactly.
08:30As this is going, it's creating peaks, and then this computer is going to turn these peaks into an actually calibrated number
08:39that ends up on your soil test result.
08:41So Jen, the next thing that we're going to do is we're going to bring these samples over here for their final analysis.
08:47Now this instrument here is going to be threefold.
08:50We can measure high phosphorus.
08:52We can measure all those other nutrients that you see on your test like calcium, magnesium, potassium.
08:57And we can also measure the heavy metals using this instrument.
09:00Want to see how this thing works?
09:01I do, I do.
09:02So inside we have a torch.
09:05Your sample is going to be introduced here and up into this torch.
09:08When this is running, this has a plasma.
09:11That plasma is cooking at about the temperature of the surface of the sun when we introduce your sample into it.
09:16Wow, that's insane.
09:17You want to go ahead and light up the plasma?
09:19I would love to try.
09:20Okay, you can close the door.
09:22Like that?
09:23Okay.
09:24And F5 is lift off.
09:27There it goes.
09:28So Jen, this is going to take about one minute per sample.
09:31When it's all done, it's going to give us another spreadsheet with all of the individual concentrations for each one of those elements that we measure.
09:38Well, I have to say it's incredible the amount of chemistry and information that you get from $26 and a cup of soil.
09:47Thank you for taking the time to show me.
09:49Absolutely.
09:50Thank you for being here and it's a service that we're happy to provide.
09:53Awesome.
09:54Hey, Jim and Allie.
10:02Hi.
10:03So, last time I was here, Allison performed a soil test and we got results back.
10:08And do you want to tell us about it?
10:10Well, the results came back excellent.
10:12Cool.
10:13Yeah.
10:14We have three major components that we want to talk about here and let's start with the pH.
10:18Okay, so the soil pH here, we're looking at a range between 5.8 and 6.5.
10:23And you tested it at 6.1.
10:26Awesome.
10:27So, you're right in mark there.
10:28Next, phosphorus.
10:29So, phosphorus, the optimum range we're looking for is between 50 and 70.
10:35And yours came in at 11.
10:3711?
10:38Yep.
10:39It's pretty typical of our soils here in the mountains.
10:41They have a low phosphorus level.
10:42Okay.
10:43So, what you're going to need to do is add phosphorus to your soil.
10:46That will be added at the time of planting.
10:49And last, we have potassium.
10:51Potassium is essential for plant growth, water regulation, nutrient uptake, and disease resistance.
10:57For potassium, we're looking at an index between 50 and 70.
11:01And your results came back in at 56.
11:03So, you're within that range.
11:05Awesome.
11:06So, there's one more test we want to talk about.
11:08Absolutely.
11:09So, some people opted to do a heavy metals test.
11:12And because of your situation, we went ahead and took a sample and sent it to a private lab.
11:17And we tested for lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury.
11:23And fortunately, they all came at a low level.
11:26Nice.
11:27That tested really fine.
11:28Awesome.
11:29Well, thank you.
11:30Thank you for doing this for us.
11:31We really appreciate it.
11:32I'm glad to help.
11:37A few weeks ago, I met the folks here at Making Hole.
11:41It's a custom furniture shop that also has a special program to help men in recovery rebuild their lives through hands-on apprenticeship.
11:49The shop was founded in 2018 by Jeremy French, who, after becoming sober himself in 1995, was looking for ways to support others during their struggle with addiction.
12:02I started asking myself the question, why do people get better?
12:05And it's kind of a short list.
12:07You know, I've been at this for 20-something years.
12:09And one was all of them had a story about a person at the beginning, a mentor of some shape, formal or informal.
12:17And the other thing I noticed is that these people all had either a profession or their primary hobby, their principal hobby.
12:26And it was something where they had to learn how to solve complicated problems all day long.
12:31So the question becomes, how do you create a format where people are interfacing with complicated problems in a community setting,
12:39where there's an opportunity to have a mentor and do that in a way that's inviting, where people want to be here, right?
12:45And so that's what this place is built on.
12:48Master Craftsman Andy Ray has been an instructor at the shop since the beginning.
12:54We're doing real work.
12:56Number one, we're not setting up a program to keep them busy.
12:59We're an actual furniture shop.
13:01And we're not only a furniture shop, we're a high-end furniture shop.
13:03So everything that goes out the door is pretty nice.
13:06These guys come in and they've got to work in a real situation, which is like life.
13:11Like, oh, my God, there's a problem.
13:13How do you solve the problem?
13:14Go figure it out.
13:16And we let them figure it out.
13:17We let them make mistakes.
13:19And then we learn how to fix our mistakes and move to the next step.
13:24It saved my life in a lot of ways.
13:26Like, there was pretty much two options for me, dying or ending up in jail, and somehow I found a third.
13:33And that was coming here and doing something that, like, changed the trajectory that my life was on.
13:38So this is different than a traditional apprenticeship where the objective is to get somebody certified to be a craftsman.
13:43This is just a place where we use the work we're doing as a language and a dialogue to process through how do you solve complicated problems.
13:52And what that does is it translates into the rest of life.
13:57We build furniture here, and that's, like, the product that you see and that we work on.
14:01But really, like, the product that we're working on on a daily basis is ourselves.
14:08Hey, Jeremy, good to see you again.
14:09Yeah, good to see you, man.
14:10Yeah, so I hear you're helping us out with Paula's vanity top.
14:12We are.
14:13We're going to build a concrete vanity with an integral sink for Paula's main bathroom.
14:17Okay.
14:18It looks like you've got sort of a template here.
14:19You were at the property.
14:20We've got a template, yep.
14:21So she's hung the vanity on the wall.
14:23And so we took a template of the vanity and the wall space so that we could build a form that will fit exactly.
14:29I get this sort of being representing the top.
14:31What does this represent?
14:32So that's going to be the sink.
14:34So that's the plug that will create the sink shape.
14:36So when that comes out, we're going to cast around it.
14:38When that comes out, that becomes the shape of the sink.
14:40So instead of a space for the sink, it'll actually be integral to the whole form.
14:43Correct, yeah.
14:44All in piece.
14:45You're doing it right here?
14:46We're doing it right here.
14:47We're setting up.
14:48We're going to apply some edging directly to this table, which is a high pressure laminate table.
14:53And then we'll cast directly into that.
14:54Let's do it.
14:55Let's do it.
14:56All right.
14:57So the first thing we want to do is make a good straight edge for the front.
15:01Regardless of what the cabinet does, we want the front edge to be straight.
15:04So what we're going to do is just, you're going to hold that.
15:07You don't get paid to look pretty.
15:09You've got to work.
15:10If this is considered work, I'm in.
15:12All right.
15:13Perfect.
15:14And we're just going to hot glue this down to the table.
15:16So this is actually just where the front of the form is going to go.
15:19This is the front edge of the vanity right here.
15:22Okay.
15:23And now we can glue down the rest of the forms.
15:34And we're done with that for now.
15:36Okay.
15:37The backside of this has some double sided tape.
15:39So now we can go ahead and locate this sink.
15:42Obviously the theme all this is about the river.
15:44This is kind of a river stone shape.
15:46It kind of maximizes this otherwise very narrow vanity.
15:49Okay.
15:50So our sinks in place.
15:51Okay.
15:52So what we're going to do is put a Vaseline, which we've diluted in mineral spirits to make
15:57it really thin.
15:58We're going to coat everything in that.
16:00And we'll just wipe this in with a paper towel.
16:04And what we want to do is just almost remove everything.
16:07We're going to get it to where there's not much left.
16:10We're going to apply caulk around each one of the transitions in the mold, starting with
16:15the sink here.
16:20And now we'll just run this tool right around to create that nice round profile.
16:25All right.
16:26Now we just need to let this silicone cure for a minute.
16:29And then we'll just be able to peel off all this excess.
16:33More ingredients than I was expecting to be honest.
16:37Yeah, there's a lot of ingredients that goes into a mix that's going to make a countertop
16:41thin and strong and durable and beautiful.
16:43Okay.
16:44And so all that begins with, we have a blend here that's got cement and sand, which is
16:49the aggregate in this mix.
16:50In the case of this countertop that we're doing for Paula, there's going to be a series
16:54of mixes that we do.
16:55And in all those mixes, we're going to be adding some sand that actually comes from the
16:59river that flows right by Paula's house.
17:01So this is what makes it personal and sort of adds that memory, good or bad, to the piece.
17:05Correct.
17:06And so what we're going to do is polish that and expose all that sand.
17:08It'll have a similar quality to a terrazzo.
17:11And then you've got smaller sand here.
17:14Yeah, we've got a finer sand.
17:15So we're going to break the mix into two different parts to begin with.
17:20And one part we're going to pour into the bottom.
17:22And the second part we're actually going to spray through a hopper gun.
17:24And so the finer material will go through the hopper gun, won't clog the hopper gun up.
17:28And that's how we'll get the mix to go over the sink without slumping down.
17:32This is a very specific glass.
17:34It's infused with zirconium.
17:35So it's not just your typical fiberglass.
17:37And that will allow it to not break down in the alkalinity of the cement.
17:41Okay.
17:42And why ice in your water?
17:43So if we want the mix to move and flow, cooling it down is the first part of that process.
17:48The second part of that process is that we have a couple of different plasticizers
17:52that actually make the mix more fluid without adding water.
17:56The more water you add, the weaker your concrete gets.
17:59And finally we've got a liquid polymer that's actually going to seal the moisture into the mix.
18:04We don't want the concrete to dry out.
18:06We want it to stay moist long enough for that cement to chemically react and turn into crystals.
18:11So basically what we're doing is making a countertop full of crystals.
18:14You didn't know that did you Kevin?
18:16I'm struck by how thin the slab is going to be.
18:30I mean this dimension is tiny to my eye for a concrete slab.
18:33Yeah well concrete's got great compressive strength which means you can't crush it easily.
18:38But it's got terrible tensile strength.
18:41The reinforcement we use for tensile strength is glass fiber which is quite small.
18:45Yeah.
18:46Which allows us to make it much thinner.
18:49What those fibers are, they're like a steel cable.
18:51If you were to break one of these fibers apart, what you would have is a hundred little filaments of fiber.
18:56So it has the same kind of strength profile that a steel cable would as opposed to just a single piece.
19:03And that's what gives it the strength.
19:09So tomorrow we'll be able to pull this out of the formwork and begin the polishing process.
19:13This is exciting to see it as it is and it's going to be awesome to see when this thing's flipped and polished.
19:17I'm excited too, yeah.
19:18Thanks man.
19:19Yeah, thanks Kevin.
19:20That's awesome.
19:26The French Broad River is one of North Carolina's most important waterways.
19:34Traversing through the mountains, it's beloved by outdoor enthusiasts.
19:38Including Gordon Grant, a lifelong paddler and educator.
19:43French Broad is one of 17 major watersheds in the state of North Carolina.
19:47It starts on the east side of the Blue Ridge Parkway up at almost 5,000 feet.
19:52It does a big J and it flows north through the mountains.
19:57So it's a fascinating river that geologists would call an antecedent river.
20:02That the river is as old or older than the mountains that it flows through.
20:07And they were uplifted around it.
20:09But in late September 2024, Hurricane Helene barreled into Western North Carolina.
20:15Causing this waterway to swell to record breaking levels.
20:19Cresting over 30 feet.
20:22This is the I-40 bridge.
20:24And notice the horizontal bars going across between the bridge pilings?
20:29Yes.
20:30The river was at least that high.
20:32Oh my gosh.
20:33And there were buildings, tractor trailers, propane tanks coming down the river.
20:40And the river actually smelled toxic, which it was because of all the industrial stew that was in it.
20:46Here, the Swannanoa, the other river in Asheville, converges with the French Broad.
20:52A recipe for disaster in a hurricane like Helene.
20:55The Swannanoa comes in from the east and it regularly flows less than 100 cubic feet per second.
21:02During the flood, it went to 40,000.
21:05Oh my gosh.
21:06So everything here was underwater. Everything you could see.
21:09The River Arts District, less than a mile up river, was hit particularly hard.
21:15So what made the River Arts District so vulnerable that it got so much more damage than other areas?
21:22Well, you can look ahead and sort of see the lay of the land. Look how flat it is.
21:26Right.
21:27Okay?
21:28It's a beautiful place to build. It's just got one big problem. When the water rises dramatically, that's where it's going.
21:35The massive cleanup effort is underway, but will take years to complete.
21:40To heal the river takes about 500 bucks a linear foot with proper reforestation.
21:47So then in the next flood, you're going to have a network of root systems, trees and natural plants that the water can flow through but will not rip apart.
21:57And how we rebuild is going to define the next decade.
22:01Are we going to be forward thinking enough to build in a way that the river can sustain itself through its own protective systems?
22:08Right.
22:09That can be done. It is not easy.
22:12But what else are we going to do with our time?
22:16Well, I can't thank you enough, Gordo. This has been so informative.
22:19Well, it's my pleasure, Zach. And as you can see, the river keeps going and so can we. Are you up for it?
22:24All right, let's do it.
22:26Until next time, I'm Zach Detmore for This Old House.
22:36Next time on This Old House, we are installing under cabinet LED lighting.
22:41And we're going to learn about good, better and best.
22:46And from polyester chips to finished carpet, all in two days under one roof.
22:51We'll show you the only factory in the world that can do that.
22:54And just out of curiosity, do you know how much length you've got on this roll?
22:5937 miles of yard.
23:02On each one?
23:03On each cone.
23:04In the back, all in the window.
23:05Let us go.
23:06Let us go!
23:07In the back.
23:08In the back, let us go, let us go and then try the top one back on it.
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