How to build deck stairs

everyone I'm Dominic from Maxima diy.com in this video I want to show you how to make a set of stairs for your deck on the outside although we use in rough lumber our measurements are definitely not going to be rough because it's all the same we're going to do look at the top of the deck base where we want our stairs ago use the straight edge in our case I'm going to use a six foot level because I have one if you don't have one just get a straight board put a level on top of that and then where your stairs are going to sit you use a tape measure level the level out put tape measure down to where the stairs are going to go and get a measurement on that and we have oh we have 45 inches now we have 45 inches from the top of the deck to where the stairs are going to go it doesn't mean like we had a hill here we don't care it doesn't matter top of the deck to where the stairs are going to go that's going to be your total rise and that's the number that we want to know about in our case we have 45 inches so what we want is a number for each step each rise of each step that fits perfectly in not 45 inches so let me do some math and we'll figure that okay so when it came up with was six stairs at seven and a half inches perfectly seven and a half even with six steps and now to give us a total rise of 45 inches perfectly thrill important if you have to go a little bit more a little bit less but also check with your town because there are some code requirements that you have minimum a maximum seven and a half between seven and eight and a half is a good number but most important that they are all the same that means right down to the grass through your cement patio whatever it may be to the top of the deck now we have six steps but we're going to may actually only have five steps of trek because the top of the deck is going to count as the six step alright so let me show you how to measure a two by 12 and measure that all up now we want to the side of the stairs now the sides of the stairs like this this is your string this is what's giving you your support to hold these stairs in our case we're only one of six steps so it's not so bad if it breaks it false you're still going to break your neck no doubt about it but suppose those stairs are 13 stairs high you know eight feet high up in the air you know you really want to be sure you get some good solid wood on the side real important for the stairs is that you look at the wood straight down make sure that's not doing anything freaky and funky going all different directions give it a little view like this make sure that board is as straight as you can possibly get it it's going to be real real important you start playing with warped wood well let me die you're gonna end up throwing these snares at your wife it's going to cause you a lot of misery not that you should throw them at your wife like I said before we're going to use a 2 by 12 for our stringers and 2 by 12 is not always 12 inches in this case it's 11 and 3/4 and that's actually pretty close anyway each step is also going to be a 2 by 12 + or - 2 by 6 is the word ever it may be but either way it's luckily about 12 inches wide but we're concerned with right now is our rise of each step now we have seven and a half inches now what you do just go to the store buy a framing square and get these little breasts I call them bugs they're actually called stair gages they actually lock the square against the 2 by 12 like this and it's going to be consistent that's the most important part is consistency you want every one of them to be the same but of course and you're done totaling to that total rise that you had our case we had the seven and a half inches now we're using a 2 by 12 for our stair treads which so before it was 11 and 3/4 wide I'm actually going to go 11 inches so each step to fit under the next step just a little bit but as I go along it's going to be the same the same so first one if you want to make sure these things they just screw on they lock right on there we're going to go to the seven and a half place we have and that's going to be our first step of the rise of the first step the riser and then down here we have step so this is actually our first step now this line here the very first one one only this is what's going to rest against the deck so just line up the square the straight straight line so when we cut these up we're actually going to cut this part of it off and this is what's going to rest against the step ah the deck all right so it's square it's going to go on to the next one if you move the camera a little bit there I am okay I'll bet is working out that's better all right you have we made our line for our first step our tread right there just going to get this framing square we're going to line it up again we're going to line this line that we have here right with the seven and a half inches the rest of its all going to fall in play because we have the stair gauge just locking it in make some lines and then we're going to just keep going go until we're done and we're going to make two of these one for you side of course we're at our last step here now terminating the last step is not a hard thing to do you got we had our tread width we have our rise our seven half inches but we don't want to cut anymore so we want to just square that last one off down to that seven and a half inches and there we go so when we lay this against the deck we're going to we're going to cut here this is going to sit on the floor and way up on top that's going to set up on the top of the deck nice and even so if everything was 100% this line will lay nice and flat against our our platform so let me get cutting these and show you what they look like once they're cut up so we're gonna do it and cut the front of it on the Neath of it and of course back up on the top like I showed you alright well I went and cut those marks those lines that we had if you look this is going really nice and flat against our deck side there and it's laying flat down on a block that I have so now what we want to do is go make another one just like that the same way you just I just showed you the first one when you don't cut them what you want to do is lay them on top of each other and make sure that they're um the same all right well I got our two stringers cut and they're perfectly fine and nice and straight against our deck there and laying flat down on a board the problem is these are four feet wide now yours are probably three feet wide which in case a single two by twelve for our tread will be fine but when we're going four feet wide that's just too much that two by twelve is going to move like this not that it's going to break but it certainly can that's just not strong enough and certainly not code so we're going to we're going to make another one but of course we can't just lay our state our treads on top of something like this so we need to cut it out just like these lines that we were doing when you need to cook now you need to make a double one and just cut those lines out so that tread will sit right on top of that really nice because of the length that it's going to take me to do that and show you I can only show you real fast on the video because youtube doesn't allow video over ten minutes apparently so I'm gonna go make that and I'll show you when it's done all right this is our inside stringer obviously it's not going to go against the stairs going to go in the center of the deck of the stairs case here but just just put it against it to show you that they're all the same and that these are our lines that we had made now this line here is going to be the top of our our tread and it's an inch and a half higher than our inside stringer because our inside stringing the tread is going to lay right up on top of these alright so now let's get building these things okay before we start putting our treads on what we want to do again this is aligned with this is it can be at the top of the tread so our tread is gonna be an inch and a half thick so we want to make it line right below that inch and a half below that we're going to use a cleat this is what sky actually gonna hold the steps up in this case we're gonna have a two by four here we're going to keep it nice and level even with that line that is going to inch and a half lower and we're going to fasten it to the string we're going to do it for each one of them on both sides and then we can just get our treads and lay our treads right up on top of those in elbows and nice and securely well as you see my stairs are all done even put the railings on it but again this video was just intended to show you I have a measure for the stairs and get them going for you see we have our first second third fourth fifth and our sixth step is the deck itself the top of it you don't ever want to discount that because you're going to find yourself too short and those two by twelves that you bought they're not cheap well they're going to be garbage so make sure you always do that math the way I showed you I hope this was helpful for you anyway I'm Dominic from axe me DIY comm see you next time

Channel: askmediy

Views: 1,544,247

Keywords: deck stairs, decks, how to, build stairs, askmediy, diy

Id: g7aa2gI0uvg

Length: 9min 45sec (585 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 01 2009