Building The Nantahala Retreat #23 | How To Install Trex Composite Decking

we are back for another episode of building the anti-halo retreat brought to you by lowe's and they actually have a selection of in stock decking here's some behind me and just to prove a point jamie and i showed up to lowe's unannounced and we got enough decking and hidden fasteners to do this entire project in one shot from one lowe's store so let's check that out you ready to go shopping i love shopping that's a lie i didn't bring this trailer for nothing okay let's go and shopping big time [Music] i knew i should have driven seriously let's do some shopping we decided to go with trex enhanced composite decking and a color called toasted sand and there are several other color options available here and i want to mention it's really nice as a contractor to be able to buy this stuff in stock because if i need more i can just come back and grab it or if i buy too much i can actually just return it and that's not the case with anything that i have to special order from anywhere there are special order options available of course and i want to mention that as well so if you're looking to upgrade the decking on your deck or maybe just build a brand new one make sure to swing into lowe's and check out all the options they have and thank you to lowe's for sponsoring this video we really appreciate it so let me get this straight here yeah you strapped the camera got my trusty camera right here okay got some zip tape yeah and some electrical oh look at that oh yeah it's high tech right here all right well if you're wondering how he got that shot that's how he did it i hope i hit record [Music] all right we're gonna get started with the installation bit of our decking that's probably what you want to see and due to this being this composite decking that doesn't have the same material on the inside as the outside we have to do a band board or a picture frame around the entire outside and we need blocking to support that because it's running the opposite way of the rest of the decking so we're going to show you that process real quick we're going to use this piece of 2x12 pressure treated kdat kiln dried uh to do the blocking on these ends i'll show you where i'm talking about we need a piece of blocking flat there so that the ends of our regular decking have something to catch on when this picture frame board is installed if you want to know a whole lot more about pressure treated wood decking everything check out our secondary channel the building knowledge channel with jamie and eric and there'll be a video that's like 10 minutes long all about just pressure treated so you can check that out oh yeah so it does take a bit of work and time to do the blocking so that you can do these picture frame boards but it's really worth it if you're going to use a composite decking like this that's capped and has a filler material that isn't colored the same as the outside of the deck board the trex material we're using here today actually has pretty large grooves cut out of the bottom of it as you'll see in a couple shots and that's to save weight and save cost but it really looks terrible if you can see the cut ends of these instead of capping it with this rim board like we're gonna do [Music] we got our temporary rim board put up and that's where our other decking will terminate we'll leave a small gap there and we snap the line for that and we're going to snap a line this way to represent our first row but we're not going to do the outside row first because it's a lot harder to notch around these posts on the first row it's easier to do a row and then have something to measure off of to do the posts so this chalk line actually represents the third row end but we did math so that we would end up with a full board on the outside with a one inch overhang especially when you're using composite decking it's important to start at the outside edge at least we do maybe people do it different ways but we always put a full board hanging one inch off the edge of the deck and usually that looks really nice but also if you have a stairway that comes up the deck usually we let a one inch overhang uh nosing like overhang on our steps and so it matches the steps anywhere that you could put steps on the deck it's already ready that's one reason we do it uh but also when you have a rip edge like we're gonna have a rip against the house i just don't think there's any chance in the world that we're going to end in a full board although there's a possibility that could happen that never happened to me but it does look better against the house where you can't see it or it's not noticeable versus right on the edge where you're always looking at it yeah and like if you only had a two inch rip at the edge and your board's gonna hang off an inch and it's only screwed on by an inch it would be bad right it could be it could be even worse than that even so we always make sure that we take care of getting a good full board on the edge i'm getting a call here bud and uh i mean i could i could repeat everything i just i think i'm getting like a little bit of a circular kind of thing now my lovely assistant jason again just kind of show us these hidden fasteners we're using and let's demonstrate how they hook into the actual material here there's a groove and they go like like so they space the boards and they hold the boards down and i believe that's stainless steel so it will never rust and the rest of its plastic won't ever rust so those are actually pretty easy to use [Music] we are finally ready to install our first board here and i'm going to do something which is to cut both ends of these even though it has a pretty square factory cut end they're not always perfect and i just recommend doing that sometimes these composite boards also like have this little loop up right at the end so if you don't need the full 12 foot which we don't on this one i'm gonna actually cut back a few inches to sort of get it to where it's in a flatter spot on the board so i really recommend cutting both ends even if you know you don't think you need to and actually i want to make a note here they're giving me an extra inch this is a 12 foot board so we do have extra to do a clean cut on each end which is great [Music] we're starting our second row here finally about lunchtime can we stop and eat something important here we started with a 12 foot board starter here and then we're staggering the joints okay this is a four foot board our next row will start with an eight foot board so all the joints are staggered four feet apart and that's a three row stagger we'll go 8 foot and then 12 foot again as a starter i think that looks good sounds like a plan [Music] a couple other really important tips i should have mentioned earlier is that our our deck joists here are on a 16 inch spacing center to center or edge to edge as you can see and this composite decking is not structural so you shouldn't do it on a 24 inch spacing because it could actually dip down between each joist it's not as strong as wood but it is more weather resistant also check this out we are spacing the butt joints about an eighth of an inch and you have to do that because this material will expand and contract when it gets hotter and cooler so it has to have a little room to grow excuse me mustard i asked you a question [Music] my wife said i'm sure i should have done this don't know what she's talking about i think it looks fine [Music] we're about 10 rows in so we're getting in a groove here uh we're starting at one end and working our way down instead of trying to get the whole board in at once right yeah it's important to get the gap established right on the body not that much about eight yeah i like that before you engage all the clips you should get your butt joint gap established because if you don't then you get it all clipped in and you can't move it yeah these clips are actually hold the board a lot when you're trying to move it back it does so get that eighth inch gap as recommended get that kind of if you've got a high or a low joist you got to go stand on the board right there and get it to you know jump down you have to press down it's a little depressed yeah jay's got a pro tip uh yeah just don't hit them in too hard because if you take them home what they do is they're gonna tilt in way too far and then you won't get your next board in but you definitely want to put a little pressure on the downward just so that when that next board comes in it does kind of lever that up and put that and hold that pressure down yep i like it let's do a demonstration okay could you explain that in some way that's easy okay perfect that was perfect down just the fuzz but he didn't hit at home like big time one thing to note if you're going to use these hidden fasteners yourself is that the part of the fastener that actually holds the board down is only about three quarters of an inch wide which is only about half the width of the top of your deck joist which means we are measuring each of these boards to fit exactly so that it will break dead center on top of our joist and we can screw our clip down dead center on top of our joist and since these fasteners are actually what's gapping each of our boards and keeping the rows looking straight down the line it's really important that all of the fasteners be fastened snugly to the row as you put them in otherwise you may end up with rows and gaps that get wider or narrower and your decking look crooked down the line we're running the last row here against the house and we're going to use different fasteners obviously you cannot do the hidden clip against the house so we're gonna try to get this slipped in face screw it just on the one side and that'll be it and with a little time still left in the day we decided to start notching some of these outside rows around our deck posts and we'll show you some of that process so in this video um eric's using a jigsaw um this is why you cut these um little things out i'm trying you're holding the camera wrong bro no he's making a youtube short see he's he's with the times yeah this is all the cool kids are doing it this way vertical got you all your film knowledge out the window living in now bro what do i know [Music] i'm not cutting all the way to the corner because these post don't have a square corner so i'm leaving a little roundy corner there okay that looks better yeah yeah you know about the roundy right everybody knows [Music] so now that jones isn't here today now he's asked me to film because when jones is here of course it's jones film this and i don't give a we're going to try something new today i rated my kids uh pencil box crayola white usually you read their lunch box we're marking on these dark boards i can't see my pencil marks so we're going to do a little test run here check it out so i'm just making like a tick mark oh gosh look at that super high biz so definitely going to use the crayola today nice good does it come off though seriously if you rub it off let me get a little uh so yeah just a tick mark it does not leave that part so we put all the clips on this side on that string line and we slid the board in got clips on this side but we're still siding our first row like this you know to make sure it's really straight before we stack all the other rows in we have most of the deck area done with this decking we're using hidden fasteners so this has a special groove in the edge to accept the hidden fastener but that is not the kind of board we want to use around the rim or the outer edge of the deck the perimeter because this doesn't look good so they make a special board for that i don't know what it's called but this is it solid a solid edged board solid edge board yeah so right now i'm going around all the edges and i'm cutting these around the posts and fitting them what i like to do is overlap the two corners and i'm just going to take this oscillating tool we call it a buzz saw that's because of the annoying sound it makes this is an excellent tool though for just free handing cutting a vertical cut through two pieces at one time and i can make whatever angle it is i don't even care i'm not going to measure it i'm not going to know i'm just going to cut the two pieces till they fit this is not the most ideal situation you know you have to hang out like over the edge of the deck wrap around the post and hug a tree and all that but it's really important you got to hold yourself under ought to not do that you got yeah i know it miter get it well you got to hold your saw like vertical you know making sure it's uh perpendicular you know to the uh direction of yeah [Music] [Music] i'm going to be cutting a notch around this post right here and i'd love to mark it in place instead of measuring i could go measurements but i love to just mark it so i need to hold the board out here like this and get my marks well that's what i want to do anyway and i'm actually working by myself over here the other guys are busy what i like to do to help myself is i screw these blocks on the outside of the band and it just like makes a little saw horse so that it's easy and one man can do it and so i'll show you what i'm going to do here take this guy i like to pre-start my screws because that saves struggle and i'm always up for saving struggle so i'm just going to screw that on like that probably one screw would be enough and this is hopefully going to make my life easier right here we go this would be even better if i had like a scaffold below but i don't so whatever all right that took what 30 seconds now i can take my piece i can set it out here because i got to space the gap off my other board and get that gap just right and so once it's positioned right where i want it then i can make my marks i can test fit it slide it in and out and also once i cut that little horseshoe shape out this board is going to be you know kind of floppy and i could break it if i'm not careful because there's only going to be an inch left so this makes it really easy to hold [Music] i was just doing some math it was taking us about eight minutes a row so i figured we got five rows left we done in 45 minutes right you will be i'll be eating lunch somehow i ended up being the cut guy today about time so i got the only way we can keep you off your phone so i got a couple cut guy tips uh with my cut station here that are making it a little faster come back camera guy i'm just showing your cut station all right number one i'm using a cordless saw because i'm having to cut both ends of this and it's actually faster for me to just with the saw than spin the board if i had a corded saw being getting all tangled up in this thing it'd be a real headache number two is i've got four saw horses so my material is laying flat everywhere and i can cut it anywhere anywhere i want okay that's number two number three i'm using my kids crayola that we saw earlier the white pencil and that's working great look at that because i can see my mark i don't lose my mark after i make it that's great all right number four what i just did right there is what i'm doing i'm just making a tick mark i'm not uh and it's the side i'm cutting on so that when i go to cut i can just align my saw blade with that mark and use my square like that boom i don't have to make a mark across and that saves a lot of time yeah and that's a good tip i'm not sure a lot of people know is that you can use your square to make a square cut without actually making a line you just hold your square on the board put your fence up to it and run your saw and it makes a square cut and for those of you wondering yes this is a triangle it's called a square and if you go back in the videos there's an awesome video actually on all the ways that you can use the square that's right thanks buddy [Music] good work guys he doesn't do anything he's still the golden boy man i thank you today we'll see you next time remember to give us a thumbs up and subscribe if you haven't already [Music] you

Channel: Perkins Builder Brothers

Views: 111,199

Rating: 4.9747267 out of 5

Keywords: Trex, Decking, Composite, How, To, Install, Installation, Deck, Porch, Replace, Hidden, Clips, Fasteners

Id: z-uv5D0U7DI

Length: 18min 21sec (1101 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2021