How To Build Deck Railings

in today's video I'm going to teach you a proper installation for our deck railing so that ten years after you build it you can't just pick it up and walk away with all right it is railing day I'm so excited because I've got about two hours to finish this job off before I get flooded out from a rainstorm that's coming so let's get to work we're putting in a horizontal rail kit if you've never seen this done before it's really really simple we're gonna go with a top and bottom rail that comes pre-drilled we're going with cedar to match our deck and then of course we're gonna have this top plate that we install it up to and leave a gap at the bottom that way everything stays nice and dry and then we're going to finish all this off with a decorative drink ledge we're gonna put a five quarter by six inch board on top and that way we have a surface on the top that we can screw together from the bottom everything be clean and shiny and we can sand and polish it and have it beautiful years to come we're gonna finish this whole system over to the stairs and down they're two steps on to the regular landing and we're gonna do these really gradual because we need to get visitors to the house it's nice to consider the fact that grandma is only five feet tall and she just can't high step it like she used to so instead of going with a nine and a half inch stair we're gonna go with three steps here with a six inch rise and that'll be simple to build we're just going to use two by six and make a couple of boxes tied together some no one slips and voila we're gonna have ourselves a finished project let's just walk through the real simple process for installing these and it really is simple so you've just got to know a couple of things before you get started so you don't mess this up one thing we're gonna know is this Center post here this is the anchor this one is perfectly plumb and my top rail is measured and installed all ready to receive the railing kit so I am exactly forty nine oh we're gonna call it a half but it's the side half okay from the base to the base and if this is plumb and that's forty nine and a half and I cut in my top rail forty nine and a half then no matter what happens over here when I screw all this together this will be plumb basic law of math right so we are going to just double-check this forty nine and three eighths we're going to call it now this kit is gonna throw you for a loop because it has end caps and these get installed on the end of the rail top and bottom and then you set it in place and then they have these little places here that you can actually use to screw these into the wood so that you're not screwing through the end of the wood you're screwing through a pleats and that'll keep your rail from breaking and rotting out over time and they're little decorative they're gonna match the caps that are going here and so that's cool so what you have to do take the two plates together measure the thickness of both those plates and turns out to be half an inch so I got to take that off of my measurement remember we were what forty nine and three eighths minus half is I have forty-eight and seven eighths good yes so we're gonna cut two pieces forty and seven eighths we're gonna do the same process all the way around the deck measure from the base of the base and then cut two for each section and then we'll assemble it all and then stick them in place and mount it with the screws it's that simple there's not a lot of brain work involved here just make sure that you're measuring the base and that's the number you go with no matter what and everything else will tighten up and close square and plump I'm gonna have a very consistent gap on both ends and if you want to know how to set your post so you have consistent gap in both ends and you're not watching the whole series watch the first section on framing because we outlined how to put those posts into your frame in that section just to show you that we got this right we're gonna pretend like this is all screwed together and see if it fits in place perfect loving it now this particular rail is gonna be about this high but before I install anything I'm gonna attach all the spindles in the top and the bottom screw it all together and then we'll shove it in and they're really giving us a lot of screw here this is like a 2-inch screw I'm only attaching a quarter-inch material so it's a little ridiculous yeah but there's really no way that's gonna come off no matter how old this rail gets I guess [Music] now some of you may have seen my son Nate did a little video on this kind of process not too long ago last year some time right and I think he was a lot better at it than I was yesterday he got a real knack for sticking these things in real quick I'm gonna have to go back and watch that video because this is frustrating one of the benefits of this system guys is you can actually go out and buy this piece of lumber with all the holes drilled already and they're already set up so it matches the code for the gaps so you can't have kids falling through the gap so it's really handy that way now if you want to be one of those people yes I did you want to be somebody who makes your own gap size and drill your holes go right ahead but for my money I like to get something that's already pre-drilled got all our rails get yourself a tapping block it says cedar and it'll get beat to just met the reins if you're pounding it in directly and then leave all your wood with all kinds of Lee dents so that's a good way to distribute the weight in here yeah which is good yeah nice and simple because we've already pre-measured knowing the height of this and we were just looking for a little bit of gap under here so we'll be able to dry after rain so now the height of this bracket attached to it just the perfect job of setting that up it's almost too stupidly lucky I mean now these screws go in a bit of an angle and you want about a half an inch gap from the front so pull it a little bit further over maybe a 3/8 because you know when you tighten it up it's gonna pull it over all right the idea here is you're gonna have two screws on the backside because that's where you want most your strength it's keeping it from falling over this is the best part of the job ok now watch this I'm gonna hug this up nice and tight there we go Rocking so at this point we're just gonna finish putting all of the structural screws in and then we'll tie a couple of screws in from the top into this section getting rid of this gap here so you don't have an air air space here nothing worse when you're sitting down and looking past a brilliant you see space in between your rails so we'll get that nice and tightened up and then we'll be able to cut our five quarter on top and screw that from the bottom this is a perfect drink ledge perfect height for standing up there and relaxing and having some time with your friends [Music] all right so now we are at that point where it's time to separate the men from the boys the finishing touches now bear with me here because railings are finishing touch this is where the details come into play everything else is basic carpentry measure and cut and screw together but when you get into your finishing touches your railings things that your hands are coming in contact with everything's got to be perfect your sight lines little things like this so I've cut this top plate that we talked about this is the five quarter board goes on top of the rail the idea is you want to split the difference on the gap it ends up being just shy of one inch on each side from the post to the corner okay what you do here is you actually want to soften up this edge this edge is actually sharp it's not very attractive so what we're gonna do is we're gonna pop down to the chop saw and we're gonna cut some corners off take our palm sander soften out all that up and then we'll coming up and screw this in place now because of the way the your saw may or may not work if it's a slider it's easy you can cut any direction you want but because the board is so wide I've actually got to cut on the inside so I'm gonna flip my board over which means I'm gonna have a rough edge on to both sides of the board it doesn't matter like I said we're gonna palm sand all of this first before we put it in we're gonna just take our palm sander I'm using a 220 grit just because Cedar's a softwood lumber and it doesn't take a whole lot of energy and you can just burn right through the whole board so I've got the speed I'll turn it down to the halfway on the speed just so that I got a chance to get used to how fast it's going to be working on this different levels of affecting this depending how dry the cedar is so sometimes you just got to learn by trial and error you can see I can also get rid of whatever dirt coming from the back here [Music] [Music] just softening up the edges [Music] keep in mind that since we're going to be using our hands on these we really want to make sure that no one's gonna have an injury [Music] just want to work it until all those marks are gone but be careful not to over sand that's why I've got the speed down low and a nice soft grit and if you over sand this after it gets wet in the next rainstorm it'll get all Carini on you and it won't be very happy with the result you can see the in the grooves here okay you've got these lines and then a space each of these are a different different material okay so the lines are actually a much denser tougher material and so when you're sanding you'll sand that soft spot and because it's a because of the different densities you're actually causing a little bit of a scoop you don't even see it and when it rains all the swells okay and so when you buy this right out of the store because it's wet cut all of those in-between spots are already raised and when they dry they're going to shrink down on you so you might even find it necessary a month from now just before you go put your clear coat finish on come back with the palm sander and give it one more shot get rid of the ridges but this handrail is nice but this now that's sexy when you're about to put this on remember I was talking about attaching it from underneath if I go straight in I'm gonna come out the top alright even if I put it on an angle like look how aggressive my angle has to be and when you start putting things on an angle like that weird things happen to the wood it starts getting pulled around and it has a tendency to want to buckle on you and you can do it if you have to but I would suggest spend the extra few bucks pick up a shorter screw something like a two-inch because this one even if I put that screw straight in from underneath okay I'm getting just enough grab there I'm gonna be real happy with that so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna sync it plus a little bit and I know I'm gonna be fine yeah remember gravity isn't the best friend here all we're doing is securing it in place yeah so give it a good pinch with your hand screw in a bit of an angle because when you get near the top the sides of the drill is gonna come in contact with Rayleigh it's gonna restrict your ability to drive that screw you might strip the head and then you're a whole lot of mess [Music] and abs buried a little bit so the last part of the railing system is when you're in one of these tight corners up against a brick wall it could be brick or vinyl or anything else for that matter but what I'd suggest is instead of going with a four by four post and then putting another big four by four post here and then just having some stupid little gap go this way you'll see this in houses all the time with handrails you'll see this on century homes whenever they have a porch they always take one of their finished boards and they attach this assembly put it in place and then they attach this to the building because we're gonna have a set of stairs here we're gonna attach the railing and we want to have that triangle effect for strength because it really isn't just for pretty it's for safety so if you're coming down your stairs and you wipe out and you grab that way a trail you know like I'm I'm 200 pounds I've put 200 pounds pressure on that railing it's got to hold me up so I don't wipe out if you don't attach to the house you're really missing out on the multiplication effect of the strength of that triangle so what we want to do and if I see if I see this one more time I'm gonna lose my mind I see all the time people will drill a hole in the mortar joint to put in their screws now that's basically sand and if you put something in the mortar joint with sand and every time somebody grabs a railing get a bit of a jiggle it starts to clear all the sand out before you know where you got a huge hole in between the bricks nothing's holding nothing and you've lost all your strength you want to drill right into the brick the greatest idea is to drill through the brick behind here so that your hole is covered from visibility from the outside and that's all you got to do now if you don't have a hammer drill that's fine I don't have a hammer drill this time around I'm gonna use a regular drill to demonstrate just a VSR drill you get the tapcon screw kit from your local building store and you get the one that has the bit in it so you always have the drill bit that's the right size you won't be disappointed now without the hammer drill function this takes a little bit longer but still very effective okay you see how long that that hole is traditionally when the the bit comes with the screw the amount of meat on that screw is equal to the depth of the screw sorry the amount of meat on the bit is equal to the depth of the screw so if I'd drive that part of my drill right up to the wood like I did I know when I put my screw in I've got room to actually set the depth of the screw so this is gonna be great could we just set our screw here oh hello puppy don't feel that listen to that torque that isn't going anywhere and if you really want to you can take some time get a little bit of plastic would fill that hole and then sand it all back later and make it invisible [Music] now I know what somebody you're gonna be sinking you're gonna be thinking aw we should roll all the way through until we get into contact with the wall behind the brick but keep this in mind the brick is four inches deep then there's an inch space plus you've got an inch of wood right so now you're dealing with six inches and then you've got probably a half inch piece of wood OSB if you go all the way through into that OSB that's not going to be any stronger especially since what we're looking for is the strength of this vertical movement here there's nobody gonna be able to rip that out of the wall that's not the concern because our 4x4 post is right into the frame if this is a surface mount maybe that's a concern and you might want to open the wall from the other side and block it and drive yourself an eight inch screw in there but dear Lord that's a lot of work to avoid having to put a post into the front into the framing [Music] [Music]

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 482,631

Rating: 4.8289552 out of 5

Keywords: home renovision, renovation, bathroom renovation, reality renovision, jeff thorman, construction, diy renovations, renovations, do it yourself, diy, instructional, hrv, deck, build a deck, how to build a deck, railings, deck railings, deck spindles

Id: mGh-FglhWbA

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 23 2018