Ask This Old House S24E16: Grass Seed Facility, Paver Patterns, and a Porch Swing with a Tiny Apprentice

Season 24, Episode 16 of Ask This Old House moves from eastern Washington grass fields to a hardscape primer to a porch ceiling that needs structural surgery. The three segments share something television often hides: the finished surface is the least interesting part. Seed, pavers, and porch swings all depend on sorting, pitch, and framing that happen before anyone admires the result.

Lee Gilliam and the Kentucky bluegrass supply chain

Lee Gilliam starts in the Pacific Northwest with Michael Neff, a professor at Washington State University and a grass breeder. Michael explains that 80% of the world's Kentucky bluegrass seed is produced in eastern Washington, and 90% is produced across the Inland Northwest, which takes in northern Idaho and northern Oregon. The name says Kentucky. The seed supply says otherwise.

Michael's breeding work focuses on yield, salt tolerance for irrigation with recycled water, and drought resistance. He shows Lee a Kentucky bluegrass flower, with seed heads and individual flowers that hold the seed. Harvest happens at night because cooler air raises humidity and helps keep moisture in the seed head. That reduces shattering, the loss of seed during the first cutting. After cutting, the crop sits in windrows for a couple of days, then a combine separates the seed heads from the rest of the plant. From there, the material goes to a seed-cleaning plant.

At the cleaning facility, Jason Miller walks Lee and Michael through the line. Material dumps into a feeder controlled by a frequency drive. An auger conveyor sends it up a bucket elevator to a SWECO, which pulls out big foreign objects and sand. A debearder chews the product to make it more consistent. A cleaner scalps and sifts more foreign material using screens. The gravity table is the part Lee compares to panning for gold. Heavies go one way, lights go another, and the seed worth keeping stays in the middle.

A mixer homogenizes the batch, bulk bags wait 20 to 30 days for testing, and the bagging line can fill about 400 bags an hour. A robot repositions each bag before picking it off the line, then stretch wrap sends it out. What looks like a quick tour is a multi-stage industrial process. Lee's earlier lawn regrade in Episode 8 was about fixing a lumpy yard at home. This one goes upstream to where the seed is bred, harvested, and cleaned. If you want the lawn context, that prior post is at Ask This Old House Season 24 Episode 8.

Mark McCullough's paver primer: patterns, materials, and the catch

Mark McCullough and Kevin O'Connor run through hardscape choices with samples in front of them. Traditional molded brick appears in running bond, diagonal running bond, herringbone, and basket-weave patterns. Running bond runs lengthwise, which Mark likes for walkways because it gives a linear feel. The diagonal version is usually for patios. Herringbone creates the most cuts, though careful layout from the center can reduce waste. Basket weave is simple: two by two by two by two, with no cuts at all.

Mark calls the traditional brick a city-hall paver, a nickname rather than a brand. A true brick paver, he says, is four inches by eight inches. The modern concrete paver is a different animal. It comes in mixed color ranges, with nubs on the sides. Those nubs create a consistent gap for polymeric sand to sink down to the bottom. Concrete pavers are the least expensive option, and once the pattern is set, installation is mostly rinse and repeat. The catch is color fade over years and salt damage. Throw de-icing salt on them, and the surface starts to degrade. Mark says good pitch on both sides of a walkway is what keeps water moving off.

Natural stone moves the price up. Bluestone is quarried in blocks, cut smooth on the sides, and left with an irregular face that is skid-resistant. Chelmsford granite is quarried locally, with a salt-and-pepper look and comparable durability. Mark says the two are comparable in price, though granite may run another dollar. Ordering is by square footage, width times length. Mark adds 2% for waste. Kevin jokes that he would add 10% given his own work habits.

The segment is a primer, not a full installation clinic. It does not walk through excavation, compacted base, edge restraint, or bedding layer, and those details decide whether the pattern stays flat. The material and pattern choices are the easy part to understand. The base prep is the part that makes a walkway last.

Nathan Gilbert hangs a porch swing with Freddy

Nathan Gilbert meets Emily, whose house just finished a major renovation. Her son Freddy becomes the apprentice. The porch swing has a good spot, but Nathan checks two things first: clearance around the swing and the structure above it. He wants two to three feet behind a porch swing. The existing support joist is about two feet from the end, and the swing's chain hangs from the middle, so two feet is not enough. They move the layout toward a center point around 32 inches out.

Nathan opens the ceiling to see what is there. He removes a PVC fascia board with an oscillating tool guided by a 2x4 ripped to 22 1/2 degrees. The relief cut lets him pull the long board cleanly. The screw holes are hidden with bungs. To back the screws out, he drives a new screw in until it bites the old one and reverses both. Under the beadboard he finds strapping, a 4x6 ceiling joist, rafters, and a ledger. The beadboard was attached to strapping running along the bottom of the ceiling joists.

The fix is a new ceiling joist built from two 2x8s screwed together, placed where the swing needs it. Nathan adds blocking on either side, hangs a bracket below the joist with 2 1/2-inch structural screws, and sisters in new strapping. The layout comes from the swing itself: 46 1/2 inches from chain to chain. Half that is 23 1/4 inches. He adds an inch and a half of pitch on each side and three inches between the first and second lag hole. A three-point laser transfers marks down to the deck so everything can be closed up and found again later. The hangers are rated for 2,000 pounds.

After the beadboard goes back, Nathan predrills for the lag bolts and mounts the hangers. Freddy helps with drills and the hook, then takes the first sit. Nathan tells the family to check the nuts and bolts about once a year. This is the same overhead-load discipline Nathan showed in the garage storage episode, where a helper and a rated rack kept a ceiling project from becoming a headache. That earlier post is at Garage Overhead Storage, 3-Way Smart Switches, and the $40 Anode Rod Nobody Replaces.

The television version makes the swing hang look like an afternoon. The real work is opening the ceiling, reinforcing the framing, transferring marks, and trusting a bracket rated far above the load. None of that shows from the porch.

DIY Confidence Scale

• Grass-seed facility: 0/10 as a DIY project. This is a watch-and-appreciate segment. The takeaway is understanding where seed comes from and why testing and cleaning matter.
• Paver primer: 5/10 for choosing a pattern, material, and ordering by square footage. Actual installation is a different rating once base prep, compaction, cutting, and edge restraint enter the picture.
• Porch swing: 8/10. Hanging a swing is simple. Adding a ceiling joist, transferring laser marks, and mounting 2,000-pound-rated hangers into reinforced framing is not a solo beginner job.

Additional Resources

• Watch on PBS
• Official This Old House episode page

The seed, the stone, and the swing all look simple from the sidewalk. The question is whether the hidden sorting, pitch, and framing were done well enough to keep them that way.