DIY DECK Part 6 | Building Deck Railings

so now we've got our decking going on on one of the platforms we've started some of the decking on our ramp but right now we're going to show how to do the skirt board and of course with any outdoor construction there's always more than one technique but this is a really simple one it didn't let me just show you so that I don't have to explain it basically with your structure we have a 2 by 8 Ridge board okay and then down at the bottom where we have our we're just going to attach it a 2x4 real quick the idea being we're creating the same depth of surface at the top and at the bottom for the skirt board to be attached on all right now because of the kind of structure since it's a floating deck our block is going to interrupt there's only two options here when you're using a floating block one is you attach your posts and your structure and then you build out four inches before you bring a skirt down but what that does is it limits your structure your four by four posts that are your handrails to being surface mount rails only or you'd have your deck extending almost a half a foot pass where your railings are which gets to look a little bit dumb so what I do is I would rather sacrifice a little bit of design and have the block showing so that I have safety I want to have these four by fours attached at the rim joist at the bottom and at the top rail so that they're gonna be it was a safety element I don't want anybody ever falling off my deck because the screw is ripped out of the wood so you can see here I've got you know 30 odd feet of ramp and platform combination some of its level some of its angled so when we get to the angled section we have an option we can either cut the boards in advance or we can cut them afterward so it works either way I'm going to show you both options so right now we'll start with just hanging a skirt board now I've marked back my spot here 16 inches and that is the measurement believe that or not I'm three of these boards side by side by side so that will come right to my outside corner so all I got to do is find my screws all right now I'm using this is just a set fence board it's very skinny it's five eighths by five and a half they call it a 1 by 6 and basically it's just for creating privacy on the fence about an inch down and an inch in on my line drive that inch and a quarter screw nothing too fancy now you take your level and here's the important part of doing skirt board you would be surprised but people can tell when they look at a skirt from a mile away if it's level or not so we make it level and then we're throwing a screw down here inch over and an inch up now I'm screwing at these two different points here trying to help eliminate the warping that's going to occur when this woods drying out no this wood is relatively wet we want a little bit of air passing underneath our deck so we can install these boards nice and tight because in about 48 hours or so once they've dried out there'll be a nice little gap there for the air to pass through so here's a little tip for you when you're doing a skirt you can't just put the level on the first board and then install 60 or 70 boards and expect it to stay straight comes out of the mill every piece of wood has got different texture and grain holds different amounts of moisture so they warp and Bend you want us to take a level every 2 or 3 boards and just confirm that you're on track and if you need to make any adjustments make it now like this just going to add myself a 32nd of an inch now when this wood dries out and the gaps appear it won't be visible at all but if you keep on going and let's say you get two or three boards that are a little bit wider at the top or they've got a bit of a bend and a warp you'll end up getting a skirt that will fan out on you and then people are coming up to look at your deck they're going to visually they're going to notice this the reason they notice it if you look down here you can take the edge of this post and look down at the edge of that post and you just pass your eye along it and they should touch top and bottom at the same time if they don't one of them is not level so when you're walking into an area like this with all these square posts and beams if something's not level it sticks out like a sore thumb because the lines are passing at an odd rate and it's really noticeable and nobody wants to be you know nobody wants to make Chuck all right so this is a little bit of fun for those of them who are comfortable using a Skilsaw or yeah we call it a Skilsaw I'm a little school basically what you need to do is you got to set the depth of your blade so you're going to be comfortable to cut this and not over cut it now all we're going to do is we're going to visually keep an eye on my blade and make sure it's on the top of my rim joist and I'm just going to run this along and these boards are going to topple over out of the way and if all goes well so that was kind of fun that's the first time we ever filmed something and we weren't rolling so we just demonstrated how to cut down the skirt board with the skill saw so we're gonna do it again add another board basically you got to get the guard out of the way so if you're not comfortable using this kind of tool then don't do this and now we just rest that blade on this room joist start her up and off you go all right so fantastic now we're here finishing off our handrails we have two systems on this stack one of them is just wood spindles it's just a matter of satisfying the code for the ramp area and we want to minimize the amount of space it takes up and not too many design dramatic features but the system here is really simple we framed a platform and a platform with a ramp in between so our posts are right at the point of contact we're going to just mark our wood here off the post translate that slope I think the angles about five or six degrees I can't remember off the top of my head but this way I can pass this over to Nate he's gonna cut it for me and I'm gonna have a top and bottom rail I've already cut the height so that's good to go and then I've got a top cap as well all right so these handrails require a banister one of these little spindle things our code in our region we can't have a gap more than three inches so we have to use you know a few hundred of these bloody things the most time-consuming part of this job is taking all those staples out yeah why they put a sticker in every single piece of wood I don't know then they bundle them together that's another video I like to just use a spacer that's really handy for when I'm doing something like this that's my Ben balusters that I'm using done all right again we want to burn that screw before we drive it so it doesn't split you see smoke you know you're good to go we're going to throw a screw right on the tip this is for all the do-it-yourselfers at home this is just a mounting screw that's your extra pair of hands as I call it and you can put one of those on each end right on the tip and then when you're done with that you can then place your board in position so I've got my trusty assistant Nate here today but if Nate wasn't available how in the world would you do something like this all by yourself well like that alright now I don't need my assistant there anymore wow that's loud now this one's sitting a little bit high so I started that screw and I'm backing this one out of the way when I drive the screw down the angle of that look it'll pull the 2x4 down the 4x4 post so you can get it nice and close and watch this I'll just perfect so now we're going to install our top cap very important especially in outdoor construction this L shape is really structurally significant you have your wood trying to warp in two different directions at the same time the fact that the grain is going in two different directions we're tighten them together creates enough resistance that neither of them will move if you don't have a top cap when you put your balusters on you're sitting here leveling and you're trying to make it all perfect with a top cap it's where I want it to be before we go crazy here what I want to do is oh no mark my fifty nine and a quarter that's my center mark because I measure this out already and if I start at one end with the space and then I come across I end up with the odd space space and each end is different and it's just a little space so what I'm going to do is start in the middle and go left and right and then the space on each end of this railing will be exactly the same I want to go just past the surface of the wood there knowing that we have a three inches of wood and that screw if I keep going we end up in my finger we don't want that so for simplicity sake we have balusters or one and a half by one and a half inch actual dimension so we can't go more than three inches and if we put two of them together it is three inches probably a little bit less so when you're doing your balusters keep it simple put two put the third one up and that's your spacing all you gotta do is just drive your screw person up nice and tight maintain your level and just like when you're doing your skirt boards throw a log bill on every two or three boards just a double check make sure things aren't going crazy and then there's your spacing we double-check their paperwork former city they gave us design specifications for what's an acceptable installation and where we are they want two screws in the bottom rail one on the top don't ask me why but that's what we're going to give them so for more tips and tricks on how to renovate your home make sure you subscribe to our Channel and Ottawa design and build your on your to

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 201,165

Rating: 4.8430743 out of 5

Keywords: deck skirt, deck skirts, deck railings, build deck railing, wooden deck railing ideas, hand rails for deck, deck skirting, deck skirting installation, deck skirting on uneven ground, deck skirting to keep animals out, deck skirt board, deck skirts ideas, deck railings how to build, deck railings installation, deck railings designs, deck railing installation, deck railing designs, diy deck railing, diy deck railing ideas, wood deck railing ideas, diy deck, deck diy

Id: dPymodBBWMA

Length: 12min 12sec (732 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 08 2016