Easy Railing Options || DIY Deck Railing Installation

foreign we're going to show you how we put railings around the treehouse because we really need them fly you fools this video was sponsored by ag1 my athletic greens just kidding [Music] [Music] are you recording yet oh okay all right people we're gonna put railings on the decking on the tree house now I went back and forth a lot on what type of railings to put up here railings banisters whatever you want to call them for a long time I was thinking wood because everything else is wood and I'm a woodworker but the problem with wood is you have to either paint it or stain it and then that doesn't last forever eventually because it's outside you're gonna have to repaint it and restain it you're dealing with rot I don't love the way that wood railings look so then I started looking at metal having something custom fabricated that was incredibly expensive but I found a really cool system now let me preface this by saying I'm in no way sponsored by the company that makes these railings I just found them I think they're cool and anybody can put a metal railing around a deck or awning banister balcony where else do you need a deck boat um anyways I'm going to show you how this whole system works I think it's cool follow along and then maybe you can put some metal railings up yourself alrighty okay okay let's do it so the system I found is from a company called Fortress railing products now again I am not being paid by them to show you how their product works I just needed some railings found their product like the way they looked and it turned out to be pretty easy to install so I thought what the heck why don't I show you how to install them in case you ever want to put railings on anything so basically you get all these parts and pieces you get the posts you get the actual railing sections they come in different lengths and then you get a whole bunch of connectors and fasteners in a box that you probably shouldn't leave out in the rain because the box starts to fall apart I didn't find any instructions in with all these pieces so we're just gonna grab a bunch of pieces and start making this up as we go I figured the first thing I had to do was install the actual posts that we're gonna hook all the railings into so I unpackaged the post now when I ordered all this stuff you order all the pieces for your specific area that you need a railing so they come with all these brackets pre-attached you can see this is a corner post because it's got brackets coming off both sides so all you really have to do is figure out where you want your post to land and bolt it to your deck but we needed some blocking underneath the deck so that we'd have something to bolt it securely too so I measured out the spaces in between our joists underneath I found this old piece of pressure treated 4x4 and I cut down some appropriate sized blocks once I had a few blocks cut down I just hammered them up underneath my deck there so that I would have something to bolt that post to once I got it up in there I just took it in place with a few screws from the outside so it wouldn't flop around while I got my bolts in from the top and voila we were ready to go now I figured it was probably pretty important that I put these posts in nice and Plum but my deck wasn't level at all so this was a little tricky so I just hooked some screws in on the back of the post just to get it held securely in place because it needed to go back towards those screws I then stuck some shims on the front and I kept an eye on that level until everything was nice and plump and then I screwed in the post on the front I just went right through those shims and in hindsight I probably should have used Cedar shims because this is going to be outside and I don't want them to rot but I didn't so in 15 years when these pine shims disintegrate I might have to redo this but for now it seems pretty darn sturdy I was actually impressed just four big screws on the bottom and then once I had it screwed securely in place you put over this nice decorative cover to make everything look all fancy and you add a few screws into that so it doesn't come undone and boom post is installed I think my biggest concern in this entire installation was dropping these tiny little screws off the edge of the deck into the bark chips because if that happens there's no getting them back so I made sure to go slow and take my time once I had a post on one corner done I did a post on the other side measuring so that it came back from the edge of the deck the same distance as my first post and shimmed and everything to get that post nice and Plum and level and all that jazz boom now the longest the railing sections come in are 92 inches so if you have a run over 92 inches you have to break it up with another post obviously the front of our deck was over 92 inches so we need to put one more post right in the middle and then we can cut our railing sections to just drop into those already installed brackets that came pre-installed on our post system so after getting those first three posts in place all I had to do was measure the distance in between the brackets and cut some railing to that length this is what the railing looks like it's already powder coated pre-welded black steel so it's pretty much ready to go you just have to cut it down to the right size so I pulled the railing out of the package and I marked on the top and bottom where I needed to make my cuts now I think you could probably cut this railing just with an angle grinder or even a metal blade on a Sawzall but I had this metal chop saw so why not use that it looks way cooler and I thought it would make a much cleaner cut so we just trimmed it down however much we needed on the top and the bottom also taking into consideration that we kind of wanted to leave even spacing on both sides between our post so sometimes we had to chop some down on one side and some down on the other side but once we had our railing chopped down all we had to do was run it up there and slide it into those brackets just like this it would have been really cool if it just dropped perfectly into place right there but it actually is a little tricky because you got to line up the brackets on the top and the bottom all at the same time but it's not too bad and then Boop it just slides in there we'll come back and we'll permanently fix this with a little set screw on all four of those brackets later but for now it's on the cutting more railing and sticking them between our posts I mean seriously isn't this a pretty darn easy way to add metal railing to your deck yeah no don't climb over it the other thing I like about this system is that you don't have to just use it with the posts when you run into a section like this that's going to terminate at the actual building you can just install the brackets directly to the building and then you don't have a situation where there's a post awkwardly close to a building it just looks a lot nicer and cleaner so to figure out exactly where I needed the brackets to land on the building I cut a section of railing the right length to fit in between that Gap and then I just use the railing to kind of Mark out where any of those brackets to land the brackets that you attach to the building are identical to the ones that are attached to the post so all you got to do is figure out where they need to go and screw them on of course I wanted to make sure that my railing was level and square to the building so everything looked good and not too wonky yes I am just going to screw these to the trim but right behind the trim is a solid 2x4 stud and the screws are long enough to penetrate the trim and make it into that stud so I know the railing will be very secure so once I got marked out where I wanted these brackets to land I just screwed them in on the top and on the bottom and slid my section of railing in and we are well on our way to having a safe and secure deck so no kids Plumb it off and break their neck hey that kind of rhymed safe and secure deck don't break your neck what the heck wow just like how we installed the brackets directly to the tree house we were also able to install brackets directly to these posts that already existed for the suspension bridge once we got the decking in front of the tree house itself done we started working on the deck around our Tower leading to the tree house now this one is a little more complicated because we're gonna have to incorporate stairs into the equation and you might be wondering well stairs are at an angle how is that going to work well don't worry I'll show you when we get there for now we just had to get all of our posts installed and do the normal Square portion of the Tower so we got all of our posts screwed in got those decorative little cover plates on the bottom and cut all of our railing sections to length once we slid those in the top was looking pretty good now you might be wondering why there's an open section in the middle right there well don't worry I got something kind of special planned for that opening and you're just gonna have to wait and see but you don't want to see that nobody wants to see that anyways I just kept installing brackets installing posts hooking them directly into those existing posts from the bridge and before too long the entire top of our little Tower was completely covered in railing and looking pretty good now on to those stairs now the stairs are going to be a little different instead of the posts sitting directly on the decking we opted for these side mount posts so that we didn't you know decrease the amount of space you had to walk up the stairs in order to figure where our posts needed to be on the upper deck to tie into the lower posts I just leaned that side mounted post back and then marked right where I needed to land my posts that would transition into going down the stairs so once I got those positions figured out I screwed them in on either side of the stairs and then I was able to measure for my last two little sections of railing up on the top of the tower before we started putting railing in down the stairs themselves so I cut those pieces to length this last piece was just a single bar but you have to remember size doesn't matter it's all about functionality and a single bar will do just fine hey there people happy holidays this video is sponsored by ag1 from athletic greens now I like doing these sponsorships because this is one of those products that I actually use on a daily basis so it's really easy to talk about now I first started taking ag1 because I was looking for something that would help support my immune system I didn't want to get sick all the time and ag-1 is nice because it's got vitamin C and zinc and healing mushrooms but I was pleased to find out that it does way more than just support your immune system it also helps with energy and Recovery it helps with aging all sorts of stuff around the holidays you get busy you're going going and you're probably not getting all the things in your diet that you actually need vitamins minerals ag1 makes it so easy to make sure that you can incorporate those into your own health routine all you do is you just take a scoop of their luscious green powder you add it to some water and just shake it up and the other cool thing is that it actually tastes good I'm not just saying that some of these vitamin you know supplements they just taste horrible but this one I would buy this at the store and drink it I like the way it tastes which makes it really easy to take it every day so that's good and not only does it taste good it's good for you this is gluten-free dairy free nut free they don't have any artificial flavors or colorings there's no pesticides or herbicides it's just goodness so you can feel good about what's going into your body so while you're taking care of everybody else this holiday season buying them gifts why don't you take care of yourself for once go to athleticgreens.com Bourbon moth you can get started on your order and right now they're going to give my entire Community a free one-year supply of their immune supporting vitamin D3 plus K2 and if that wasn't good enough already they're also going to give you five free travel packs so you can try it out and I know you're gonna like it so go get some now when it came to the railing for the stairs it has to be angled luckily they make these railing sections that are hinged on the top and the bottom so that you can kind of tilt them to whatever angle you need them to be at to match the angle of your staircase pretty slick huh we thought it was going to be as simple as that it turned out to be a little harder now see they have these brackets like the ones we hooked to the tree house but then they also have these brackets that you bolt to the post that allow the bracket for the railing to tilts to match whatever the angle needs to be for your stairs so far so good pretty awesome just kind of hook those together and then hook those brackets onto our posts now unlike the posts for the upper part of the deck these ones didn't come pre-drilled so we have to actually attach the brackets ourself which isn't hard to do you just drill a hole through the metal and then they come with these self-tapping metal screws so you just drill the hole a little small and screw them on there not too big of a deal so we marked out where we needed those brackets to go and then we thought it would be easier if we just attached the railing to those brackets so it wasn't trying to kind of come out of the brackets and then we could position where the posts needed to be lowered down on our stairs we're going to find out later in this video that there is a much much easier way to do this than the way that we're doing it but we've never done this before so you kind of learn as you go once we figured out where our posts needed to go lower down we secured that to the stairs and then we just had to figure out where our brackets needed to land on the post now there was one huge issue here that we hadn't noticed yet and it's that those slats in our railing are not parallel to the Post Yeah we didn't realize this until after we got it all the way installed unfortunately we didn't realize that the angle of the railing was going to kind of mess up the length of the top and bottom rail and we were going to have to make some strategic cuts to make everything parallel but at this point we're just ignorantly charging Forward Thinking everything's gonna be totally fine which it wasn't so like a fool I installed the brackets on my post and then we screwed our railing to those brackets but you can see it's way closer to the post on the bottom than at the top but because we're not standing back and looking at it we hadn't really noticed it until right now when we put a level on those and realized it wasn't level at all uh-oh not yet knowing quite how to fix the problem I went ahead and secured the post with these self-tapping metal screws they provide and to make things worse when I was doing the last screw the top of my bit broke off in the screw head darn things are just really going our way by the next morning we had realized our mistake and now we knew how to fix it now if all this is confusing don't worry I'm going to show you what I'm talking about right now we missed one key step to the whole angled railing thing you see if we set the railing on our stairs to match the angle we got it touching the post at the bottom we put a level on our little slats to make sure that's level you can see it's touching the post at the bottom everything's level but at the top it's not touching the post so in order to get both of those sections touching the post Well we'd have to bring those little railing slats out of Plum so what we had to do was we had to measure the Gap at the top and then we had to remove that much material from the railing at the bottom once we did this we could get the railing installed nice and Plum and level and square to the posts and all that but we didn't realize that the first time so we just stuck the railing up there without cutting it and everything was out of whack but now that we know we should be able to fly through the rest of this so after cutting that little bit of material off on the bottom we added our little brackets and we stuck the whole thing back up there just to make sure that everything was going to work the way we thought it would now you can see those brackets are touching on the bottom and the top and everything's level and parallel to the post we are good to go so we marked onto the post where the brackets needed the land we bolted the brackets to the post and then we bolted our railing to those brackets then we hooked our post on the lower section of the stairs leaving the railing just loose for now and then we did something incredibly smart we just clamped the railing to the post this gave us the exact angle that we needed to cut the railing at and showed us exactly where we needed to mount our brackets so in hindsight we should have just mounted all of our posts clamped all the railing on the outside marked the railing and cut it we could have foregone all that fumbling around and trying to figure out angles and measurements so if you ever do stairs and use this railing system just put your railings up first clamp your railing to the outside of the posts mark them cut them install them it's that easy and don't forget your safety glasses or you're going to look like this when you're cutting the railing down to size but my eyes are safe and the railing was cut appropriately so after struggling through the first section of railing on the stairs and looking like a bunch of doofuses well now we had it pretty much figured out and the other nice thing was since we had one section done we could just take the measurements off of our first section and pretty much just duplicate it over on the other side so the other side took about an eighth of the amount of time as the first sight because we didn't really have to think we could just measure install and go so being the smart Lads we were we installed our posts we clamped the railing to the posts marked measured cut down our railing put our brackets up everything was Plumb level looking good so we installed our first post then after getting that first post installed without breaking off the tip of my driver bit we installed our lower post and once again just clamped the railing up there look amazing so much easier things you learned from experience once it was clamped up there I could just hold the bracket in place Mark out exactly on the railing and the post where the bracket needed to land take everything down cut it put it back up and I knew it was going to be perfect so after we got our brackets installed to the posts and our railing cut down for our last section we slid it into place and it looked well almost like we knew what we were doing and when I say almost it's because I forgot a key thing these posts for the stairs come longer than you need them and I got the entire left side installed and realized I forgot to cut the post down to length so the post on the left was taller than the post on the right so after saying that everything went together seamlessly which it almost did we had to take it all apart Mark our posts cut the post down to the right length and then put everything back together again fortunately this didn't take too long and finally we had all of our posts and railings installed now it was time to make them look all pretty along with the kit comes these nice little caps that you can put on the end of each post so that water doesn't sit down in the posts and it looks pretty nice and clean you just kind of pound them into place with a rubber mallet oh yeah looks pretty good and then they make these Nice metal bracket covers now you just choose how you want to screw your railing into the bracket either on the inside or the outside so there is a screw on the other side holding that railing firmly in place and then you just stick these little metal bracket covers over each bracket this also keeps water from sitting down in there and gives it a much nicer and with that our railing system was entirely installed there was just one more special project I wanted to do for my son now you saw earlier on that I left that one section of railing opened up well that's because there's stairs on a tree house which is kind of cool but most of the time kids don't want to go upstairs they want to climb on things so I decided to add a little climbing feature so that if they didn't want to go up the stairs well there'd be another option for getting up to the Treehouse itself so the first thing I did was cover that entire front side of the Tower with some more pressure treated lumber this would give me a surface to mount my climbing apparatuses which are these I got on Amazon and I found these Treehouse ladder rungs at least that's what they were advertised as so thinking since I'm building a tree house these should work just fine I took the time to very carefully install them all making sure they were nice and level and evenly spaced out you know really putting thought and Care into my work as I went once I got them all installed I called out the foreman to give them a little test run he came out and willingly tried to climb up them and that's when I realized well you can't tell here but as he's climbing up him I'm seeing that those things are flexing quite a bit and it has me a little worried about the strength of these so-called Amazon Treehouse ladder rungs so after he climbed up him I gave him the old strength test what the heck who would think these are okay for a treehouse they immediately busted right off that's obviously not gonna work I haven't over built this entire tree house to this point just to put some cheap flimsy ladder rungs on the front of it at the last minute so off to the Big Box store to buy a bunch of bits and Bobs from the galvanized piping section if the ladder I bought on Amazon's not going to work I'll just make my own huh look at that beefy boy that's gotta work as a ladder run so I removed all the cheap plastic Amazon wannabe ladder rungs and I switched them out with these makeshift galvanized pipe ladder rugs because I want to be able to hang on these myself it's not just diver that's going to be climbing up these I'm gonna be climbing up them too once again I called Ivor out and he gave him the old one two test uh we waved at the neighbors who were walking by questioning all of my life decisions and once I ever climbed up them it was my turn now these ones did Flex a little bit because I'm ginormous but they were very sturdy and secure and I was much more confident in how they were going to work and with that the railings were up the ladder was installed and the tree house was one step closer to being done and it looks pretty darn good to boot you can walk up the stairs you can climb down the ladder and you can play at your leisure there's still one more thing that we're gonna do to the front of this and that is at a slide off of the deck right outside the door but the slide's not here yet so that'll have to wait for another video for now there was just one thing left to do [Music] foreign [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] I mean if you want a metal railing and you don't want to fabricate one yourself and you don't want wood because you don't want it to rot this is a great option I will put a link to this product in the video description along with everything else we used so check it out down there and also uh well our website's closed for the holidays so you can't get merchandise but you could still sign up for cameo down there okay until next time foreign

Channel: Bourbon Moth Woodworking

Views: 182,140

Keywords: Easy Railing Options, DIY Deck Railing Installation, hand rail, home improvement, how to, deck railing, how to build a deck, how to build, how to install cable railing, diy cable railing, renovation ideas, how to install, how to draw, how to get sturdy, tom silva, how to fix, ask this old house, this old house, metal deck railing installation, metal deck railing ideas, metal deck railings do it-yourself, metal deck railing kits, metal deck railing brackets, DIY, woodworking

Id: uc3ADZFn9_E

Length: 27min 3sec (1623 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 24 2022