Cabin in the Woods: Installing Aluminum Porch Railing on Deck

so one thing that we've been waiting on was the custom or at least i guess special order aluminum rails for this deck so that obviously nobody goes off the edge and they showed up so we're back here to install those we also did a uh we did a cover board here a fascia board on the front of the porch where it was just a treated uh board which obviously we never wanted to leave that we just didn't know what we're gonna do so we did that today already we're gonna get these rails done and it's just going to be a black aluminum rail so i think that'll fit in really good with the decor and first thing we're going to do is i don't have my laser distance measure i think greg's got it we'll get all of our dimensions for each section and then we'll go cut them inside where it's a little bit warmer even though guys i don't know how i can show you without showing you because you're never going to feel it the temperature of this building the the thermostat set at 70 and i don't know about you if you've ever experienced a radiant heat before but a radiant heated floor in a building like this is like nothing that you would ever be used to if you live in a house with a forced air maybe an electric baseboard heat might feel the same but the fact that all that warmth is coming out of the slab that concrete floor your feet are warm 70 degrees is way too hot in my house i keep it at 70 and i'm always cold because it's just blowing hot air around it doesn't really heat the objects versus the radiant floor in this building is just radiating that heat through everything and it's amazing so i'm actually feeling really nice out here outside greg was just out here in his t-shirt because he was sweating so bad hey you got the laser let's get these measurements i want to make sure we go like go like four inches off the ground greg grab that dimension okay i'm gonna write it down on this seven foot three and eleven sixteenths don't i have a marker oh yeah right here that's close enough three and a half so not not too bad we have a little bit of leeway with this uh material let's see what you got in the middle seven six and five eight which we know they aren't exactly the same seven six and thirteen sixteenths that's close geez we suck that's true now this should be close to seven foot three and you know half ish or whatever seven three three eights yeah seven three five eight five sixteenths okay all right so we got all the dimensions and we're going to go ahead and cut them downstairs where it's not going to leave aluminum filings everywhere so these are the aluminum rails super lightweight durable they're going to last aluminum is nice for this sort of application and no maintenance are going is going to be needed so that's also a bonus pretty lucky here because i thought these were eight footers i've got eight foot post spacings thankfully we we have enough rail i was actually worried when i first pulled my tape measure on this but we're actually going to be cutting off about an inch inch and a half off of each end so we you're not going to do that from one side you're not going to cut the dimension down on one side you're going to want to go from the middle out that way your spacing is equal and we've got a bandsaw the blade's right there in the in the case right here there we go yeah good call now once we run it it should should straighten it out go ahead load that bad boy up let's see okay there we go oh it's on one speed let's see doesn't need to be super high okay okay see how this goes huh [Music] i love little band saws though man that's that's pretty easy [Music] got a little while i'm out [Music] all right i'm going to install this rail here this is an aluminum powder coated rail and what's nice about the aluminum is it's going to be very low maintenance we're just going to set the rail out of the way for now i've already cut the rail down to size and i did that by getting my measurement with a laser distance measure greg did that with me and then i measure from the center out that way i'm cutting off the exact same on both ends that way my spacing on my spindles are the exact same now what i need to do is mount some brackets and i want to show you how easy this system is so it comes with this little hardware kit and i got this from menards i don't even know the brand name uh i don't know i've got a box over there i could take a look but i've got these brackets and i'm going to install them on my post and i don't need those screws i'll set the rail in make sure it's all good and plumb and then that is it so what i've got let me grab this i cut myself a little block and what i'm doing is i'm making sure that it's a consistent measurement off the porch that way when i put my spacer block in the middle it's all good to go and what i've got to do is mark inch and a half because that's the center of my spacer then i'm just going to mount this right on that mark i'm going to use some two inch grk deck screws even though it comes with its own little screw i think these are a little bit these appear to be a little bit i think stronger they're structural they're made for outdoors so that's what we're gonna go with so i'm gonna get one screw in i'm gonna check it for square on the post and then i can put the other screw in do the same thing on this side okay now on this one it's because it looks like i got maybe something going on here where it's not perfectly flat i'm going to double check by running square lines let's say we're pretty much right where we want to be just wanted to check it's always good i'm going to mark inch and a half i got my line so i like to do is just set this right where i think it goes i'm going to take one of my screws center it in the hole if you don't go in center as soon as you screw it in it's going to be off so [Music] all right so now they've got those brackets on we can go ahead and set the rail on top of these guys all right so i'm gonna take this rail and it's just as easy as bringing it in i'm gonna set it on those bottoms push it down before we screw the tops in i'm just going to step back and i'm going to look at it compared to the next one over in order to be consistent i'm going to mark inch and a half on both sides so i know where the center is now if you're wondering why i'm not centering these in these posts it's because eventually probably in the springtime there's going to be a screen that's installed on the outside edge making this a nice screened-in porch so now i'll take my other two brackets i'll go ahead and install those centered up on my inch and a half mark [Music] once i get that installed what i'm going to do is i'm going to screw i'm just going to kind of find the midpoint because you always want to cut these a little loose and i'm going to screw right into that bracket with a self tapper i'll do that on the top and the bottom [Music] and now that we have that installed it's time to put our covers back on hopefully we cut them good there's a chance that they're going to be tight which is a good thing i don't want them to be super loose but that seems a little too tight for me i might just have to trim a little bit off okay [Music] that's going to get screwed in oh bur right there and now we can put our top rail on oh perfect looks good and straight so i can go ahead and screw the uh i can screw that bracket right where it's at because it looks good no oh no oh i can see it all right it's down there go grab it i dropped my screw but anyway that i think shows you how easy these go together you literally cut them to fit mount your brackets install them pop on your top and bottom and boom you got a railing i got one more to do and then i've got a post to mount in the middle of this 10 foot span it's a little bit too big for they don't make an aluminum rail that big at least i couldn't at least i couldn't find any so oh that looks great there we go so in the interest of getting this done guys i'm sorry it started snowing out and i've also got snow removal work to do so i'm trying to wrap this deck up not done here completely i still got to do a little bull nose across the mezzanine i don't think i'm going to get to that today which means i got to come back i also didn't get enough fasteners for the kitchen poles on the kitchen cabinets i thought all of them were a quarter inch size but only some of them were some of them were the smaller i don't know number 10s or whatever they are so i've got to get some more of those so i got to come back anyway but i'm going to try and wrap up this this last section of railing i got one more section of rail to do i don't know if i'll get it done today but it's really looking good you never get the day that you think you're going to get i swear well go figure i knew when i started this project that we might get a little bit of snow that's going to stop us from completing it i've got one little section of handrail to do greg and i also take care of actually believe it or not this customer's company we manage their uh sidewalks entrances all of that during the snow season so when there's snow on the ground when it starts snowing we go there and take care of that so that's a little side thing that we do usually doesn't amount to too much during the year but i figured when i took that on if it was snowing i probably didn't want to be working on buildings and it just made sense to keep everybody busy so that's what i gotta run do now but as you can see i got the majority of this handrail done i think it looks really good it's sleek it matches the decor it's going to be maintenance free so nobody likes to maintain a set of spindles go ahead and mark that location i'm actually going to cut this down to height before i install it'll be a lot easier than when i did the other one in place and then i can cut my rails so this is going to cut down to 40 inches [Applause] so one of the things that we forgot was or we didn't forget at the time of building and designing this porch i assumed that i could do a 10 foot section of aluminum rail come to find out i couldn't order that through my supplier they didn't have a source that they could find i'm sure there's somebody out there that does it or would make me a custom one but we didn't really have the time for that so what we did was we split up this 10 foot bay with a aluminum post here and i think it looks good it's fine i think it's better than having a cedar post up through the middle but we didn't have blocking underneath this because it was never a plan to put a post here so greg while i was up here getting things prepped he pulled the steel panel off and got me blocking in between the two joists that run somewhere right here and and now we're going to be nice and solid i still got two holes to put in here yet but what i'm going to do is leave those loose so that i can plumb this up side to side when i get my bracket installed here and then i install this section of rail so now that i have my two bottom brackets in i'm just going to take the rail system i'm gonna set it right on top the two bottoms and then what i can do is when i install my top brackets i can use it to plumb this guy up which it needs to go out just a hair okay so right about there that's easy enough let's get this started all right now that i've got that one installed i'm going to go ahead and finish lagging in on my bottom post here check it for plumb in and out looks like i i need to bring this front down and lean it in but before i do anything with shims i'm gonna go ahead and put my other legs in and see what happens because sometimes just by putting them in you're gonna you're gonna move it one way or the other okay now i'm just gonna snug this one down boom oh no i forgot the install kit doing it all right last thing to do is to put the caps on hopefully they're cut good that one's good and then i got my bottoms same exact thing just gotta put the cap on and then we've got a base i'll get my blower up here get all this cleaned off there we go well that's pretty exciting because now the rails are done the exterior is complete we've got all the interior done now and i think we can actually call this a finished project i did get word today that my client after being in here you know and having this property here over this winter period when we've had a lot of snow as you can see back here on these roofs we've got a gutter guard to protect the gutters from filling up with limbs and leaves and debris from out here in the forest but the problem is it doesn't do a good job of stopping the snow from going right over the gutter guard and you know maybe forming ice on the sidewalk or when you're coming in and out of the door the main door off to the garage it drips there so what we're going to do probably is we're going to for one probably work on getting some sort of a snow bar up on the standing seam roof to stop the snow from coming off the roof and hurting somebody potentially but also i think we might back come springtime we might work on adding a little overhang of some sort on that door that way when people are coming in and out there's not any potential drip or snow coming off the roof and hitting people probably a great idea something that you know you can't always figure everything out 100 at the beginning and sometimes as you move through the project you say hey that's probably not a bad idea and that's probably one of those things that not a bad idea i'm gonna go ahead and get out of here clean up and appreciate you guys all hanging out for this build series it was a lot of videos it was a long time in you know i guess six months time is what it took us to do this and uh even though that's not that long for some people's projects that's long for us and it was definitely something that challenged us but at the end we can look at it and say we did that and it's pretty darn cool so hopefully you guys enjoyed it if you did make sure you give me a thumbs up and maybe think about subscribing so you can follow along with future builds so cool thanks a lot guys

Channel: RR Buildings

Views: 99,138

Rating: 4.972414 out of 5

Keywords: barndominium, build a cabin in the woods, building a post frame, cabin in the woods, how to build a post frame, hunting cabin build, layout, pole barn house, post frame house construction, r&r buildings, residential post frame, rr buildings, deck railing, porch railing, installing aluminum railing, installing aluminum handrail on deck, do it yourself, how to, home improvement

Id: Ne-ajU_Yt1w

Length: 21min 38sec (1298 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 20 2021