Building a Large Outdoor Staircase

so this is the staircase put in by the previous homeowner and as you can tell it's just it's just very wonky it's very jacked and crooked and the lumber was not treated or sealed so today I am going to completely wipe it to the ground and start from scratch I was originally going to be using my chainsaw you do the dental work for the staircase but my chain was very dull and I didn't want to take the time to sharpen it so instead I ended up using a sawzall to do all of the demo work overall this project took me seven full days to complete and right at $700 I purchased all of my material which is all treated lumber at the Home Depot using my Home Depot consumer credit card if you have a project on your to-do list and want to help support my channel then definitely look into the link I left in the description of the video the longer term financing with the Home Depot credit card makes tackling these larger jobs a bit easier next I moved on to the task of pulling out these posts that were set in concrete now I know that there's multiple ways of doing this but I tried a way of using a high lift jack which if you're not familiar what they can be very dangerous just like any other tool so if you're going to use one the be sure to be careful but I attach two two by fours to the front side of the 4x4 so that I could essentially start jacking the pose directly up out of the ground now as you can see it does take quite a bit of effort to use the lift but I was actually quite enjoying myself and it took less than a minute to rip each post out of the ground which i think is outstanding now that pretty neat oh nope got a I need your strength yeah there's no way I'm lifting that sometimes you just got to know when to call on the help the last thing I want to do is end up hurting myself thank you now before you say it a lot of people are often confused by or even insult my husband for not helping me out on tougher jobs like this and believe me I have no problem asking for help when I want it or need it but I do prefer to do things on my own if I'm able to and he respects that with the demo work 100% complete I then started working on what will be the platform for the new staircase there are already some existing anchors in this concrete slab but I just felt better adding a little bit more support so I went ahead and drilled a few holes in the concrete slab here so I can add in a few additional support brackets and then I started setting the post in place I would set the post in its bracket make sure it was plumb on two sides and then fasten it temporarily with some scraps to hold it in plumb then I could move down to the bottom and actually secure it to the bracket I repeated this to all four of the post and at this point I left all of the 4x4 material extra long so that I could set it in place and cut it to its final high flater on and I once again just use some temporary material to cross-brace these pose to keep them in plumb on both directions then I was able to move to the top use a speed square to transfer out the height that I needed the platform to eventually be at and then cut all four of the post to their final height and I did this using my smaller sawzall next I started cutting and attaching all of the boards that will be the header boards I'll be using carriage bolts for the majority of this build which means that I would take my material and first pre-drill my hole placement down on the ground then I would clamp the board in place and transfer that hole location into the four by four post where it needs to be attached hammer the carriage bolts into place and then secure it with a washer on a nut on the back I did that to all four of the board's around the top perimeter then move to the bottom and created four giant X's that are half lapped in the center in order to act as the cross bracing members and to create this half lap I would clamp the piece of material in my superjaws use my circular saw to make multiple cuts then come back with a hammer and use the claw in to knock away all the chips then set the braces in place and then once again use carriage bolts to fasten them down going back up to the top I laid down a third floor joist with the joist hanger and then started laying down all the decking for the decking I'm going with one by Mature real that is spaced apart a quarter of an inch I would first lay down construction adhesive place in my spacer and then secure the board using two screws per floor joist when I got to the very last board I ripped it to size using my table saw so that it would end up flush and next I started attaching the four by four posts that I'll use later for the handrails and on these I use my circular saw to notch them out so that I could just attach them a little bit more securely now the corner one was a little bit tricky although it's very easy to do instead of a straight forward half lap essentially needed the inside corner notched out so that it will keep this post directly in line with both the left and also that right post which is important later on whenever I started touching the handrail portion all right and now I was on to laying out the stringers I'm going to go ahead and leave you a link in the description to both the videos and the book that I used in order to lay this out in fact I got so frustrated trying to get these stringers correct that I ended up calling in my engineering husband to give me a hand with this once it was properly laid out though I went through with my circular salt to make the cut making sure not to go past the line but just right up to it I would make all of the cuts going one direction and then come back and make all of the cuts going the opposite direction then I would come back with my battery-operated sawzall and finish making the cut if you don't have one then of course a jigsaw would also do the trick nicely after I got one stringer completely cut out then I used it as a template to make the other two and then just repeated the cutting process I installed the stringer hangars to the header of the structure and then move the stringer into place and then secure it using nails now it's important to already know what material thickness you're going to be using for your treads so that you can line up these stringers correctly so that that top step will come out perfectly flush with your platform and it just so happened that my stringers were lining up right where a few carriage bolts were so I used the round portion of my palm sander in order to create some divots so that they could still line up perfectly flush with that header when all three stringers were hung and I added in some cross members in between them just to give it a little bit more support I once a called in Cody's help whenever it came time to install this kicker plate which goes underneath all of the stringers and gets secured to that concrete pad I went ahead and used construction adhesive but then also came back with a few concrete screws to secure it and before setting this I did pull a string line from that back post forward to give myself a point of reference to measure off of and get these stringers nice and straight once I was satisfied with the placement and that everything was going to come out straight once the handrails were attached I started attaching my riser material starting off with the very bottom one so I cut this riser the same as that riser down there so now I can move the stringer flush just to square the structure up and you'll see that I even marked off where that Center stringer needed to be moved so that it was in a continuous straight line all the way down I started off using nails but then I very quickly switched over using screws I would first cut to length and then attach all of my risers and then come back and install the treads which is the flat portion of the stairs to make aligning these go very quickly since there is an overhang I cut a scrap piece of wood to size to use as a spacer then I would use three males per string or to secure it it took a tremendous amount of work in order to get to this point where it actually looked and was also being able to be used as stairs so I was very excited hey get off my stairs alright next step was to start installing the two four by fours that I'll use for the handrails going up and down the stairs I first notched out the treads where they needed to be placed and then attach them using live bolts keep in mind that this handrail portion is of course completely customizable so go online and look at other staircases to see what you like and don't like before actually tackling this portion for most of my handrail portion I'm using one by material which is secured by toe nailing into the four by four post once I establish the top and bottom lines of the handrails then I came back and went ahead and cut those posts to their final height with the angle in it using a circular saw to make two passes and then it was on to the very tedious task of adding in all of the spindles and to make this go a little bit quicker I utilized a jig that was very quickly put together it's essentially a two by four to dictate the spacing in between the spindles and then another board that goes in exactly half the depth so that I can set the jig in place place the spindle in the corner and it not only maintained the spacing but is also in the center of the board then I can go to the underside and secure it with the screw I would go through and secure all of the bottom of the spindles first then go to the top of the staircase again utilizing my jig and secure the top once all of the spindles are in place and I can come back with the final board a trim along the bottom just to give it a more even and finished look then the last thing was the top cap again I started at the very top of the platform and then worked my way down the staircase I would make sure that the overhang was exactly where I needed it by measuring the top and the bottom before securing it with screws now don't forget if you have a big project of your own to tackle to check out THD car.com slash April so this was a little bit this was a lot more complicated than what anticipating and probably actually the most complicated project that I've yet to tackle but I'm very happy with the way that it came out and it definitely needed to be done now I still need to come back and set probably two more intermediate post and concrete in order to support these stringers just a tad bit more but this is going to be great and sturdy enough to walk up and down in the meantime I also still need to come back and paint it however since I used treated wood I'm gonna allow the wood to fully dry out a few weeks and then I'll come back and paint it so be sure to follow me on instagram if you want to see updated photos on it and of course if you want more details and I have left the link in the description to the written tutorial on my website so I'm calling this one done I will see you on my next project I hope you enjoyed this one

Channel: April Wilkerson

Views: 7,592,158

Rating: 4.8336735 out of 5

Keywords: make stairs, stairs, DIY, How to, April Wilkerson, Woman builder, building stairs, making stairs, stair stringers, outdoor staircase, two story stairs, outdoor project, staircase construction, stairbuilding, woodworking, triton tools, stair landing, treads and risers, anchor posts to concrete, cutting stringers, wilkerdos, diy stairs, diy staircase

Id: pCFsroLfTaI

Length: 11min 7sec (667 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 27 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/whyjojo]

Fantastic video.. so much detail in making the hand rails.

[u/p_i_e_t_a_s]

What’s her YouTube channel?

[u/hundredseven]

Yes this was great. All looked very well made. My only doubt was the attachment of the corner posts on the top platform.. but it might be fine.

[u/nadvargas]

A Redhead and she's handy. That is hot.