How to Fix Your Deck | A to Z

in this video I am gonna show you the secret to turning a deck that you think you just got to rip out and throw in the garbage and salvage it and turn it into something beautiful like this if so if you are a homeowner and you've got a deck project that you think is just not salvageable but you don't have a budget for something brand-new we're gonna take you through the next few videos that we put together all the step by step secrets to building a deck like this now our system works if it's a brand-new deck as well so you know no matter what your situation is we've got the answers to your questions in the following series we're gonna show you how to frame it how to put out your railing posts in how to deck it how to rail it how to cap it how to trim it how to skirt it how to put stairs on it and then all the decorative accessories that you're gonna want to make your deck look like a million dollars and then also we have a video just going to show you how to treat the deck because this is so important if you want a maintenance-free wood surface everything you need to know it's coming right up so if you're like most people you're living in a house that's got a pre-existing deck that was built with great intentions but not with the greatest of skill level so we're dealing with the deck today that says dead as the plant that was sitting on it not nice to look at the sad thing is is the substructure of this deck I can tell just by looking at it it's still nice and solid but everything on top is completely rotten it hasn't been managed properly it hasn't been dealt with for the weather and it wasn't built right so that it could dry and it's just been rotting where it sits for the last 15 years such a shame so we're gonna get this all taken care of and removed so that we can rebuild it and have a beautiful place to hang out again one of the things you got to take real care with when you're in this situation is not to get carried away it's real easy to pull out a sledgehammer and the crowbar sort ripping everything apart but remember we want to reattach a new deck to the same structure so we're gonna have a bit of a labor-intensive process bye-bye so we found out really quickly here when we push the railing over that they were using the wrong size screws to build everything so let's find out if they put the floor down with the right screws [Music] nope okay so this wood is inch-and-a-quarter which means this screw should be at least a two and a half inch all right you want it to be one and a half times longer than the material you're attaching and that's just not cutting it so these are short this is pretty much a trim screw this is designed to put you know these little trim boards into a frame boy if they built the whole deck this way they've actually done us a really big favor because that'll be a lot easier on my drill to pull all these screws out what I want to do oh that's just spinning and that's just spinning so I don't know if that's in the wood or if it's rotting underneath or if it's just these screws oh occasionally are gonna grab Wow we might be in a situation where we're gonna be able to just yeah well try to pull as many as we can I think we're gonna be using the crowbar to lift it out because of that situation that means that the top of all these joists are going to be compromised so we put our new decking lumber down we're actually gonna have to go back with a three inch screw so that we're going past the compromised number into solid meat again and that'll solve your problem and enable you to save all of the substructure here Wow yeah yeah that was really done well this is a great way to have a look this wood under here aside from a little bit of organic material that builds up which is somewhat normal it's actually in pretty good shape and you'll see all of these screws that are broken off oh yeah yeah there is a lot of people out there that think that the acq screw which is a deck screw is gonna last forever this is a great reminder that it's not if you don't install it properly and you don't treat your deck the screws will rest out and rot and they'll just be useless this actually kind of amazing to be honest with you when I lifted this up I was expecting to see a lot more rot on the surface of this deck this is a testimony to how good quality a pressure-treated substructure is this was built wrong it was holding moisture it wasn't being able to dry and it still isn't rotted out the top of this wood like that can still hold this screw that's amazing I'm really pleased with that result now they only use a 2 by 6 frame so there is a bit of a bounce to this deck so we're going to do a little bit of shoring up just to get rid of the bounce and that way we can save this [Music] [Applause] [Music] you got with summer day [Music] so just a quick tip we're gonna actually cut some vapor barrier plastic that goes underneath this deck we're gonna open it up as we go so if we're walking on you know something that's not gonna be full of mud and then when we're done building this little project we're gonna leave it there and open it up so that we have a vapor barrier under our deck to help control a lot of the ground moisture that's going to come up the greatest enemy you have when you're building it that close to the ground is what I call the sauna effect it's because of the Sun heating down and it draws all the moisture out of the dirt and it pulls it into the wood because it really overheats underneath there so if you don't have a lot of airflow underneath your near porch or your deck when you're close to the ground you're going to rot prematurely so if I laying down in a plastic round sheet you'll knock about 90% of the moisture that's being pulled up underneath that ground gives your deck a lot more time to release that moisture back into the atmosphere so that it has a drying period every night as well and it's not going to be wet in the morning when it starts again that's where the problem comes in if it's wet when the day starts you're done you're gonna rot that thing out in five years [Music] [Music] if if this looks level to you I'm gonna suggest you go seek some medical attention this is extremely brutal I'm not sure what they were using here outside of just oh I don't even have a clue it's attached to the house that's level the last section here falls away this piece here seems to be pretty consistent with the front rim joist and then the middle collapses because it's carrying all the weight because of the way they built this thing again this is the cost of trying to frame without lumber long enough to do the job it's just bizarre to me why they didn't just go from that point to that point this is a mission that's successful we pulled off the most of the deck boards here the way we're doing it we're leaving our wood intact and it's in good condition however it's obvious that this was the do-it-yourselfer project there's a lot of structural issues here we're gonna have to make a list figure out a plan to restore all that before we can read ech not surprising I'm just by looking at them when we first arrived we knew there was going to be some surprises this is not disappointing so as a homeowner if you open up your deck and you see something completely messed up like this you might feel a little overwhelmed but the reality is is the basics of structure are quite simple and you can make a few adjustments to something even as dilapidated as this to bring it back to life so in our next video we're going to show you how to reframe your deck but just make your structural changes so you can save it and not have to get involved with ripping it all out and starting all over from scratch so we're gonna talk real quick about structural framing for decks outside and there are two kinds of decks that you can build one is where it actually has structure and footings and is attached to the house which by you actually attaching to the building and all of your posts that are going to the ground are down into a footing that goes below a frost line if you have one in your area or it's in something solid that's not going to be in direct contact with dirt so it doesn't cause rotting and premature dropping of your deck in this situation this DIY homeowner that built this deck did a combination of both and you'll see this all the time people think it's a really good idea to attach to the house and then they just drop some 4x4 posts into the soil they'll pack it down a little bit maybe it's all a disaster so we've got all kinds of movement going on the middle is almost completely sunken right out of sight and I'll just drop this in here for you have a quick peek there is a one-inch gap over four and a half feet here and this is already the low part of the deck when I go and put my level this way I am looking at well I could stick my full whole hand underneath here this is a 5 foot sorry 6 foot level it's an 8 foot deck and you get an idea of how dramatic the drop is in the middle here we can also see that over in that corner over there they didn't know how to make it level all the way the outside so that's attached to the house and the last foot and a half is attached to the post and the post is buried you can see that going down on the course of brick over here is the words most visible and dramatic now it's OK to build on top of your concrete step you can use this as structure that's not a problem it's not okay to attach a rim joist to it and then use that as your hanging lumber for the next piece of joists this is still only attached to two screws on a 2x4 in that corner and a couple of screws to a sinking floor-by-floor post over here so as that post drops the entire deck is dropping with it and it's created a real mess and you can see as it all drops of course the butt end of here starts to stick up now the screws are coming loose everything's starting to rot absolute mess of course nothing is ever square but what we can do in this situation is we can come up with a strategy for restoring this frame so that we can actually put a deck surface back on top now the one thing the homeowner that built this did right is he's got his joists on a 16 inch Center so we could start with that we're not too concerned about it being out of square because the original deck although it wasn't square with the house visibly it wasn't didn't appear to be Sun square so if you want to save your deck structure really what you want to do is find out where all the load is and this is what I mean since all of the points in this deck meet up in the middle onto this post this is carrying the majority of the weight even when you're walking over here all the weight is transferred on these themes all over the deck to this one point so every step that's taken is pushing this into the dirt so we want to do right away is eliminate it if because it's less than 8 feet here and this is attached to the house if we can get this front Ridge stable and sitting on floating blocks so it won't sink anymore then I can put a new lumber and span the whole distance okay using proper joist hangers I'm gonna be able to get another 20 or 30 years out of this before it starts to sink anymore and even if it does sink it's a really simple fix to lift up the deck and put some shim underneath the level it off again I know it's not perfect but let's be realistic here in the real world when you get a lemon you got to find a way to make lemonade so this is what we're gonna do today the only other thing we're gonna change other than that is we're going to raise that back corner I'm going to show you tips and tricks so you can just cut and raise and reinstall and you're not going to have to tear all this apart and throw it in the landfill for me I would rather have a deck that is 90% structurally solid then start all over again with a brand new investment all that time all that waste all that tree in the garbage just doesn't make any sense bottom line is the decks go in the garbage sooner or later what you want to do is find a way to build it so it's strong safe and enjoyable for a reasonable amount of time based on your investment here we're gonna resurface put in some nice railings we just need to shore this up so we're gonna get another 20 or 30 years out of it before it's completely done its use and I think we can accomplish that stay tuned I'm going to show you all my tips and tricks so before I get into cutting this down and repairing it I just wanted to talk real quick about basic structure technology and options that are available in the market to help extend the life here a deck one of them is a building tape this is basically like a like a really thick tar paper it's self adhesive and the idea is as you put on top of your joists and wraps the sides and you can see when we take this deck off you can see the effect these are the gaps that are in between the boards okay now generally speaking that's not water damaged but over here you can see this is where the boards were joined okay and that is complete garbage now if you're building your deck and you're doing fishbone or picture frame and your boxing and adding extra wood and you're gonna have cut ends like that this was a cedar deck and even cedar is going to rot out on you and having all that exposed wet organic material stuck there all the time that's your enemy so if you're not going to be the kind of person that takes time to pressure wash all the joints clean all the time then use some of this kind of deck protection and it'll help stretch out the length of your deck the other thing we're going to use here is head lock screws I love this technology these things are awesome because they replace the strength of a 3h galvanized lag bolt and they allow me to put structural strength and every piece of lumber that I'm tying together I'm not relying on nails or screws so that I've got enough shear strength where I'm being creative with my repairs and I can carry all the weight of a whole family being out here without any risk for their safety so fasten your seat belts here we go there we go let's see that's already a really big improvement just getting rid of that one stupid shim I think when I look at this the concept of having the 2x4 sleepers on top of the concrete pad is sound I don't like the fact that the cotton base two by fours to come out here and stop and they're not attached to this ridge plate except for probably some nails it looks like these nails on everything except now I'm seeing screws here you just I just I can't be sure of anything well the plan is that this 2x6 needs to be enforced properly at each end so that the would that it's attached who is actually carrying the weight that this 2x6 is transferring right now there's two deck screws over here and there's a couple of nails into the 4x4 post over here I can see which is interesting screws on the carry eighty pounds each it's a lousy sheer strength material for the framework of a deck because acq screws will rest over time especially near the front entrance area because people use salt when they're got the ice in the wintertime and that salt corrodes which is why we had trouble with a lot of the screws over here ripping out the deck boards so we're gonna put in a proper joist hanger over here gonna get some proper structural screws there as well and then I think what I want to do is I want to cut this back so I can keep this two by six and I can tie in with a new joists from here off this post all the way to the house and we'll get rid of all this mess in the middle and then I can use a joist hanger and tied this two by six and at least that is going to straighten out my deck get rid of this bow and once I've got this straight and I'll do the same thing I'm gonna remove this whole 2x6 joist assembly here I don't have a choice I mean probably the only other thing that I can do is I can cut this one back remove this hanger and then put another joist here and then lift this all into place that's probably the best that we're gonna be able to come up with and that will transfer all of my load and get rid of this Center post all two altogether so that the only place where I'm gonna have any repair issues is gonna be on the perimeter because I don't want to have to ever crawl underneath the deck I won't have access ever in the future but if we use the right kind of skirting we can always have access to the repairs on the post on the outside so we'll make a couple of cuts put a couple of new boards in straighten it all out and then we're going to show you how to fix the other up side frame so the irony is is in the idea the way this was built the longest lumber used here was eight feet long and you can see the the rim on the other side the last joist there is a full piece of wood and that's the only full piece of wood in this whole build except for the 2x4 or the other end everything else in the middle was cut up I'm not sure why that was necessary I think originally he they probably should have stopped right here with the post brought a full joist across and tied it together at that point and all of these could have been full joist had they just got the delivery of the longer wood all of this would have been avoided so I'll just get right into this this joist is 16 inches on center its artery in the perfect spot so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use this as my guide to line up with this and I'm gonna cut this piece back right on that edge right so if that's my joke wow that is really way out it you gotta love it basically all I'm gonna do I'm just gonna mark it with a screw here real quick so now I have my place where I'm going to cut and once I've cut this out I'm also going to remove this and this and the post and then I'll put in a brand new 2 by 6 with the joist hanger and transfer this load now we're not transferring a lot of load over a lot of space I know traditionally we like to double these up but let's be honest this decks been here for 20 years and in this condition it still helped kept people safe and out of the dirt so if we rebuild it in similar fashion with better technology we're gonna get it another 20 years out of it all the weight of sinking this down into the ground this is actually under pressure being bent over and popped up now that the pressures gone that is awesome okay and in the same fashion this 16 inch line here we're gonna want to keep that as well this piece of 2 by 6 so we don't have to replace the entire carriage area we're gonna cut this one as well since this is gonna be removed anyway [Music] that is not a structural nail why am I not surprised oh all the way to the deck this whole assembly is on one roofing now just total incompetence unbelievable you know there's a time and a place to save money when you're building something but when you're relying on these fasteners to do all of the structural carrying you really can't afford to go and whoops not buy the right nails you're at the store buying a hanger pick up the structural screws they might come in a box to look something like this they have the bit in the box it's really not that difficult 10 bucks and save somebody from a major injury you'll notice someone I'm cutting with this I'm actually rocking it back and forth it's a reciprocate it means the blades firing in and out of the housing but at the end of the day there's so much bouncing going on but the more of the saws moving itself too fast [Music] yep that shouldn't be able to be done like that now what do we got over here hey hey finishing nails love it now someone named screws on the other some of them are galvanized some of them aren't somebody who's building this out of a jar of fasteners whatever they picked up they use is unbelievable so there there are a lot of connections made here there are eight joist hangers intermittently thrown around how many the other end of the joist hanger there's a piece of lumber that's stuck together with I'm skirt board screws or Oh God Only Knows finishing nails why even bother putting the hardware on so these boards are actually in the way they're not necessary this and this this is where the bulk of the joints of the original decking boards were going yep when it comes apart that easy let me guess we got some more of those really awesome screws here's the tip for you if you get a meal and it's all soft and weak and you can't hammer it through put it in sideways now roll it over this way okay you can pull it out the other side so now you get an idea of what I'm talking about I got this all cleaned up okay put my whole hand underneath there but when we put our new piece of wood that spans the entire gap and I lift this into the floor joist BAM my whole deck will be flush it's still not level but at this point all of the load goes from the wall to the outside rim and then it's just a matter of fixing those few spots we're gonna be good to go just gonna throw in a no second pair of hands there it's what I like to call it I'm gonna swing this one around and we'll set it up and that's how I'm gonna measure so I know I'm perfectly level and I know this isn't square so I'm going to take both measurements yeah take my monster triangle yeah well that's not too bad here we go so when you're building a deck you don't always have the luxury of the right tool for the right job and as a homeowner if you have a skill saw you've got all you need in order to do your framing plus one of these so what I do is I can actually use this as my guard all right so I'm going to set the depth of my blade and this creates that gap from my plate okay so that I can run above this yep I'm good so what I do is I hold this against my wood I hold the SOB plate against the triangle and I can actually run over until my blade is exactly where I want it back it up start it and I run the saw against my triangle that I have pinched in place with my hand [Applause] that is a technique for cutting all your dimensional lumber you don't have to use the chop saw so you can actually have the saw with you with your triangle and you can be running around your deck making all your cuts and cutting them on the site boom boom boom boom flip them over and screw them in it'll save you a lot of running back and forth to a stationary saw like this now put my screw up the corner there's my second pair of hands again and I can just slide this along and set that on the rail back there slide it in place okay we're just gonna set this flush with the front rail try the screw so 2x6 requires a one screw for every two inches that's your basic concept there each screw it's got 80 pounds of structural strength attached to it for sheer strength that's 240 screw pounds at each end when you're using deck screws now over here we're gonna end up using our joist hangers which are crazy straw we're talking a couple thousand pounds of shear strength we're gonna do the same thing here [Music] [Music] classic example of a homeowner we built the deck I didn't know what he was doing but he was close you know there's a lot of what's done here that was kind of close to right with a few modifications that can all be saved remember every time you're disappointed with something if you just throw it all in the garbage and start over that's a lot of garbage and then today's world throwing things in the garbage for posterity sake is just I think it's irresponsible so if you don't like what you got fix it don't just toss it up and that is almost perfect except this corner is a little low and our whole fronts a little low so now we've got our structure flat we'll call it and we have one two three four five points where all the wood is sitting in dirt and that's what we're gonna fix next because really we don't want them sitting in dirt so all we have to do is cut them off at the bottom and then we will Jack the whole deck up put down a little bit of stone dust and a concrete block then we can set that on to and we're gonna be absolutely fine I think it's important to note here that this two by six is doing most of the work when it comes to carrying the load back and forth for everything that's coming across the middle and this post really doesn't have a lot of structural significance at this point so I'm going to cut it loose so that the front can be raised at best I'm probably gonna scab it a little 2x4 in there just for stability but since the deck has got a propensity to sink and not raise I don't have a problem putting a scab on that and just give me a little bit extra strength but obviously I don't think it's really significant when a guy doesn't even take his welcome mat off the step yeah baby when he building the deck he's not poor hungry there ain't no way no footings no concrete no anything just dig a hole shove it in the dirt and let the clay and the frost do all the rest now the idea here is to lift the deck and level it off when you're building a deck structure you're gonna think about water removal as well this front step has got a slope away from the house so any water that gets past the deck will just go underneath the ground are you here that's perfectly fine the rest of this deck the boards are gonna be going left to right and so there's a space between every board for water to be removed we don't need to maintain any kind of slope here so we're gonna try to raise this up to perfectly level here's our temporary support which makes our gap yeah three inches that's pretty intense important to note that in our region check your local Building Code but any structure like this that we build in our region under 24 inches has no building code so there's no rules so you can do your whole popsicle stick deck if you want to but just so that I can sleep at night I like to use some intelligence some structural fasteners a little bit of science but you know legally but this other homeowner done there's nothing wrong with it so it was lousy but it wasn't wrong because it's not a legal stranger I'm throwing in some limestone screenings here just so that I can level this off and then I'm gonna be throwing in a concrete slab the idea here is I want to yeah get that block right there perfect folks if I'm 1/8 of a degree off level I'm gonna be perfectly happy with it that's structurally sound throw this on our new piece of wood that goes right from one side of the other and this time I'm gonna take a marker to mark my posts where I like it level okay I'm also gonna come at it from this side and have a look coming this way and we'll see if we're relatively in the same spot that looks good yeah so I'm going to take it up to here now this time I'm gonna lift it to my line and then about an eighth of an inch about that way once I'm done putting all my aggregate down here I'll be able to tamp it into place back up our screw watch this down to my line forever so with this I'm just basically doing a splint knowing that I put enough screws in this block and that is basically six I have 500 pounds of shear strength in this one corner so I would have to fit six adults between that wall in this corner and between here and here jumping up and down with all their strength simultaneously before we were having a risk of hanging high under structural failure I'm pretty sure that we're not gonna end up with that kind of a scenario all right this is just really great for leveling things they buy the order of the peaky blinders so my favorite technique for installing a joist hanger and this is a 2 by 6 it means that the hanger is a little shorter than the material I'm using okay push it together so that is sitting close and then you can force it open now they have these tabs here so once it's seated on the bottom of the would you use that tab and it comes like a little nail tooth that holds it in place once it's in place you can come along now you don't have to have three hands anymore now these screws are inch-and-a-half which is perfect for this scenario you're never gonna screw through the wood and get your legs which is important to note because you can buy them longer and if you do that by accident it's a people have been known to throw a screw in their knee before when you're doing a joist hanger every one of these little holes gets a screw this is engineered to hold the bracket to the your room or your joists this is engineered to hold this piece of material from separating from the bracket so it doesn't fall out of the seat okay so especially if you're building a deck and you're using technology like this and you're getting inspections make sure you're using the proper fastener this is a number 10 okay this is really fabulous for outdoors and this is not a coated screw it's acq compliant but it's not a Kota screw this is an alloy it's forged it'll never rust period not like galvanized nails not like hcq screws that will never rust and if you aren't using a forged alloy on your Simpson Strong Tie you'll fail inspection and sooner or later one of these days just fall apart the copper and pressure-treated and the pressure tree lumber is what caused the oxidation that kills your screw so the coating only protects it for so long that's why when you're dealing with structure we're deal with point load we deal with brackets we deal with forged screws those elements will never rust and will never fail I mean all the board's can lift off and rot off and that's fine you're not going to fall through your deck there you go so we have basically reconstructed our deck we've got all our point loads taken care of we have our new joists packaged in we have joist hangers everywhere we've put some new head lock screws right through the plate into the wall just to strengthen things up because it looked a little soft over here on the side you've got a 2x4 that's carrying our load this is really not right but what we're gonna do is we're gonna transfer all our load points on this front of the deck right from the framing to the porch by using cedar shimmy technique so the reality is our joists package that's carrying weight here is only three and a half feet long so it's not a big concern that we're using a little smaller number there that's what's there and rebuilding that means tearing everything apart and nobody's in the mood for that this decks already been here for 20 years and nobody's had an accident it's just kind of funny because here we've got this lovely 2 by 6 area that looks like they use scraps to do the job you've got two of them cut down here and a little scrap in the middle this is not gonna cut it folks when you're stabbing something like this in a wall using a 1 foot piece is probably fine but when you're doing it on the floor you really want to laminate the majority of the board if not the whole thing and then here's the key every six inches you want to go from high to low to high like Big W is all the way across the board that's gonna give you that strength of a triangle would can't bend if it's attached in that manner so that's how we do it up down and up all right mmm ten screws 80 pounds each 800 pounds that's not going anywhere anymore so now it's not just flat oh I'm loving it you know when you get down here called some person like this you almost see every last choice at the very last second come together and touch that is absolutely sexy I don't think we could have done that good a job with brand-new lumber this is a little overkill right reality is three of these screws will hold the whole deck [Music] these replaced the strength of a 3/8 galvanized bolt which means I don't have to drill knock in a bowl throw in a washer and a nut and then wrench it all together I can just drag this in with my impact driver and I'm structurally sound forever these things run about three to four dollars a screw but if you ask me I think it's worth [Music] the last step you really want to take care of and this is really simple is you're going to have your outside Ridge plate and you want to create a nice level surface off the front top and bottom so there's two advantages to having this piece of wood down here one you have a skirt board you can attach it'll be flush to when we put in our post for our our railing system we don't have to go surface mount we don't have to just rely on the first 4 or 5 inches of wood here to screw to we can actually cut our post to go all the way down into here so I can attach it down here in the middle and with the top rail that creates three points of contact which makes the entire deck so strong no one will ever ever ever ever be able to fall through the railing I think I did when we started the job [Music] okay so let's talk deck there's our surface we want a 42-inch deck rail alright and in our design we would love to have our post just a little bit higher than our real so we have room for a decorative LED light on top in this corner and in this corner so in order to accomplish that task this here is a 2 by 4 on the flat ok underneath that is going to be it's gonna be made like a tee all right like this and this part is gonna have the pre-drilled holes for the spindles coming down ok so we have this 2x4 we have this two by four and then a five quarter board on top of that even more and that gets your drink life surface so we want to add all that together 5 quarter inch and a half all right and then that's our 42 mark of a bum we're going to add two more 44 so we'll go forty-four inches above the surface of the deck here which is inch and a quarter okay because that's also inch and a quarter till we hit the frame gotta remember that and then we want to go inside the frame that takes us to forty five and a quarter no we bought eight foot posts okay so an 8 foot posts if we're cut in half is 48 that only gives us about three and a half inches extension we don't get down to the next rail in the bottom not the end of the world but I'd really like to do that where the handrail ties in so what we're going to do is this we're gonna do the math for the middle rail here the unifor by four okay to intersect with this alright so our 44 will come to here so 44 - inch tunic or half and - five and a quarter that takes us to [Music] sugar two and three-quarters off forty four it's forty one and a quarter okay for that middle post and then we'll throw in the 504 inches on top of that to get into the deck frame and then this one will be long enough to go all the way to the bottom so if our major intersection points at the handrail and at the corner can be really buried that's awesome so we'll cut the first one at forty one and a quarter and that'll be four here shoe and the balance we'll use here and we'll set it at the right height and hopefully it'll get deep enough here's some work okay so I can throw a screw in there that's where I wanted to sit the height wise alright and I can find my spot alright so without even throwing a level in it just to get started when you're building your frames just before you start decking make sure you get your structural posts in place and my structural I meant like railing structure the idea here is we want to know exactly what we're gonna do for how we're cutting our lumber eight-foot posts this one's a little bit more than eight feet long what I do is I just kind of grab a few miles from my order I like to visualize the space this is basically the height of that railing plus an inch because you want to keep a gap down there so that things stay nice and dry then there's another two by four and then a five quarter board that leaves us with almost three inches of stub which is perfect for the LED cap usually those lights when they sit about an inch over the top and that'll just give everything a nice clean and tensional look and then the shorter post will just be brought over here somewhere in the middle when we get into that kind of math that's part of the railing design so we'll talk about that a little bit later but what we want to do is just make a mental note this is gonna be the height our middle post is going to be coming out of this deck right to this point okay that's it no higher I know we're only doing structure but I'm going to show you a little cheat here while you're building your deck that'll help make your railings look flawless because you want to have a lot of consistency with the gaps so what we're gonna do is we're gonna take our two spindle rails and we're gonna just set them in place now the idea is here it's coming from one side flush and from the other side flush and right away because of them pre-drilled from the factory the gap from the post of the first spindle it's exactly the same and this is where the intersection is going to happen so I have a four foot section right so this is about my Center now visually if that's my Center and I put my four by four posts inside that corner of the frame all right I'm going on this post I'm gonna have a quarter inch and over here my spindle will have to be cut in half that's stupid so what we're gonna do is we're gonna move down here to this location where I have from the corner here to this about two inch from corner here to this about two inch that now is my location it is perfect and I'm gonna measure from the post to my choice package it's just over an inch all right now I can move everything out of my way now that I have my number irony is in order to make this perfectly square I want to be one inch from my choice to the beginning of my wood which is just beside all my structural screws isn't that a lovely surprise so this is where my post will go and that'll be nice and tight what I'm doing here is not relying on the screws through the rim plate to hold the post you will find these things love to twist overtime don't forget when cedar grows cedar grows like this okay so when you cut it he wants to untangle itself that's why they always twist so when you're putting in a post even if it's overnight you've got to have a top rail attached to temporarily screw it all in and make sure that it's not going all whist on you because you don't come out in the morning and be like a candy cane deck what this does this gives me a lot of more support because now when there's pressure or force on the on the railing up here going hours it's it's levered here and then the bottom inside the deck wants to go that way so by putting this block here and I restrict the ability of the bottom of that post to swing into the deck it extra makes the top of the deck all that much stronger so now when I'm pulling on this I'm not just pulling on the top of this I'm also creating a force on the bottom of this post going inwards but with that blocking there I don't have to rely on the thread on these screws to hold it in place I also have the shear strength of the screws going into the 2x6 here at three different points help hold it all together [Music] and the reason I've included this setting you're railing posts and blocks in the framing video it's because if you don't set your rails and you're blocking before you put your decking on the only option you have left is to notch them and hang them off the side they split easy you could use those fancy little post cap thing and screw it together and screw it down and that's all fine and good in some scenarios but this is actually gonna be a railing and there's actually gonna be people coming and going and safety is a concern here because it's gonna be two stairs so we want to make sure that all this is as rigid as humanly possible and that is all part of structure so we're just gonna get this finished up and it'll be time to start laying the deck boards so today is deck day last night we put all of our lumber on our deck just to store it leaving it on the grounds not a good idea because it's really really long and so if you put it on your neck which should be level it'll help keep your board straight and they won't twist overnight so we're gonna restock the pile now real quick so we can start laying it and the idea here is we want to start with the finish of the deck don't start at the house folks I always start where your deck finishes this will enable you to get a perfect measurement for your overhang you can take into account what kind of skirting system you're going to use and there are a few that would work for you so we'll go through those options and then you want to pull out your jigsaw and cut around your posts get everything nice and snug and pretty and then we'll get going I'm really important to have a straight line when you start really really important to make sure when you order your decking boards grab a few extra you're always going to be disappointed when they deliver there's always gonna be a couple in there you just want to throw in the garbage and we'll show you a tip and a trick what to do with the wood after you're done it involves the handrail and shorter pieces so even the big crazy work pieces will be useful later on so we got to sort your wood but for now let's get moving it will move a couple boards at a time and that will help us to sort out the really bad right away my system for installing your five quarter deck boards is as follows one take your load and start laying it out and you'll quickly identify boards that have got a bad warp to them I call it the hockey stick collection and they're all over here okay now when you take a look at what I'm doing here you can see real quickly that I've got probably three or four boards there that I can use there's only half length that's really simple I've got handrail sections here that I can use out of that lumber as well so I don't want to be installing that in the deck especially in the early part because I don't like to fight with those boards if it's not necessary if I have to force a couple them in which we will just probably number here I can tell I've got probably two or three that I'm gonna have to force in then that's fine but I want to identify the straightest lumber that I have just by putting them down together and when you lay it all out most of these boards that are here now are in pretty good shape as far as it being straight that's where we got to start now once we get straight we also want to take a look at the crown crowning on a deck board can be really awkward especially when they're 16 feet long Oh rule number one when you're working with this stuff every time you see a sticker get rid of it nothing worse than being done and seeing stickers sticking out of your deck anyway you're gonna see that all the wood has got a green in it okay so what you want is you take a look at the green it's like a bowl in a lot of cases and that bowl is going to start like this and it'll curl all over time so what you want to do is you want to have a crown up which is the top of the rainbow facing up so that it's like this instead okay while that's drying it'll be trying to dry ends down which are already screwed in place so then the board stays flat if you leave it the other way it'll be fighting and drying and trying to lift your screws you run the risk of these things kind of coming loose over time and you get this cupping effect it's not very nice to welcome so crown up now we take a look at this wood some pretty decent shape just going to do a visual inspection I'm looking for chunks that are missing rough surfaces knots that have come loose and fallen out but I think that board is in good shape so here we are I'm happy with that one it's nice and tight nice and straight this a little bit of rubbing is just dirt and that'll come off at the very end we give it a quick light sand and now I'm also looking for my second best board and that's going to go on the nosing so it also has to be perfectly straight we also want to see what kind of condition this board is in and we're good and if your board is longer than your deck and you're gonna be doing cut offs this one has a split in it yes it does so there's a split in this board right here so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take this board I'm gonna spin it around so I'm installing the split on the cutoff side not on my install side and that'll help to make sure that I don't have a big gap showing up next year that's gonna get wet and stay wet and promote early rot so we want to eliminate that problem from happening before we start and the crown is in the right way get rid of my sticker now let's get this one through now this is the advantage of getting boards longer than you're gonna use now there's a lot of people out there have this misconception the cedar only comes in 16 foot lengths that's not true I can get it up to 20 feet we have a couple of locations in town that have great relationships with mills and give me 20 foot cedar boards so I can do an 18 19 foot deck and still just install all my splits and cut them off when I'm done and that's worth its weight in gold because at the end of the day the last thing you want to do is build your deck with joints on the joists that's why we're replacing this deck the one that was here was cedar and it they did that they had short lumber and that caused early rot it was a disaster so we're gonna avoid that at all costs because when we're installing that's got a bad split and it's already cupping so it's upside down and it's backwards now the reason I'd like to take my extra time here is the process for actually installing it is just screwing it down so once I get going with my screws I don't like to stop and inspect and flip and turn that's the wrong time to do that because there's usually other people helping you put all the screws in someone's gonna take the board in the back of the head just take time lay it out get it pretty much ready to go here's an example of a decision that you got to make for yourself I'm bleeding imagine that this board right in this position is crowned is crown up the way we want it that's the most ideal situation unfortunately it also comes with some bad damage on the edge here in two spots probably from some young kid at the store where the forklift doesn't what the hell he's doing not a big deal okay yeah it's crowned the wrong way but I would rather have it crown the wrong way then have a nasty ugly spot showing and because we ordered this on a delivery I don't have a whole lot of choice I got to use this board because it's so straight I think it's worth it to put it the wrong way reminding myself this I'll pull the board off the wall like that now I know that this is crown the wrong way all right and when I'm installing this I'm going to use a little construction adhesive on the joist just to help make sure I don't get the Buckley all right so before we go Dec we want to make sure we have our vision for our skirt in place and that's the area we're closing off underneath the deck we gotta make sure we don't get animals crawling underneath we don't want any skunks making a home under here because that would really wreck the atmosphere so let's talk about options so that you have the ability to make your decision how you want to do yours first of all with your first board in place you should measure off to the wall and find out what kind of a sliver you're gonna have left at the house we're gonna be about a half board which is perfect so I'm not going to worry about the math because either way I move this to make my skirt I'm gonna be fine if you end up with just a little little tiny piece you might consider making some of your gaps just a little bit bigger so that you finish with a full board but that's another story here we go my first board up against all my posts I have a three and a half piece of 4x4 plus the one and a half that's five inches these are five quarter by six they actually end up being about five and an eighth five and a quarter boom there we go look at how flush that is that isn't terrible that leaves a nice gap on the backside so if I finish flat like that no that's easy right but how do you finish the deck if I put any material here it's gonna be in front of the board so if you use a deck board as a frame around your whole deck like this you'll still have enough material down here you could attach a lattice or you could attach skirt board because skirt board is like a fence board and it's only 5/8 well this is inch and a quarter so it'll have a nice recess it'll look very clean and you can put vertical skirt board underneath the other option you got of course is to create a nosing at the beginning of the deck now since this is gonna be a staircase I know it takes a little bit more work but if you were to do the math and set yourself up with a nice stair nosing and then a skirt board then you've got something to attach your steps to everything looks clean and tiny and then the end result is this nosing is the same as the stair so then in order to get that set up we want to measure this off about an inch and a quarter so that after our five-eighths we still have a five-eighths overhang I like 5/8 overhang because two of these boards on a traditional riser that you can buy from the store as a premade is the same depth as the stair plus 5/8 okay so if you start with a 5/8 after your script is on you'll end up with the same nosing size on every stair and that's a nice way to finish it doesn't take a whole lot of math so 5/8 plus 5/8 inch and 1/4 so we're just gonna take our tape and we're gonna measure back inch in the quarter right there okay and then I'm going to measure from here to my deck board that's up against all my posts all right and I have a one inch gap all right now I don't want to take off one inch of material because I still need a gap but when I'm done so I want to take off 7/8 I want to leave 1/8 for the expansion contraction so while my joints are consistent so what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna say there we go I've got my system in place I have to notch out 7/8 around every one of these posts and that's just a really simple way to do this so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take my giant triangle here up against my deck now watch this because these corners are all rounded all right and the system here with a rounded deck is really quite dangerous if you flip it around this way you'll make contact with the solid side and you'll actually make the mark on the right place okay so there we go I always come backwards and slide up to your post and when you're cutting cut the pencil to disappear and you know you're making the right move don't worry about making the pencil mark too long it's not gonna matter when we're all done we're gonna come back with the sander anyway now the trick here is we want to make this look like it was built from scratch perfectly which it isn't we're salvaging the old frame so every one of these deck post locations is just a little bit different so the second one in the fourth winner in contact with the wood this one and the aren't so there's a little bit of movement so if we cut all of them exactly the same we're gonna end up with gaps so here instead of 7/8 I'm going to remove an extra eight boom gonna go to 3/4 on this one 7/8 where I'm making contact it's probably the most important measurement on the entire build once you get this one done everything else should just go nice and smooth because we've organized our wood to be straight and we have a finish all figured out so this one board the first one you set on behind your post once you've got that that's like your template all you got to do is make sure everything is gapped consistently after that you're home free so we're just gonna take our jigsaw here now and we're gonna line up our blades so that we're actually eating the pencil now I want my blade just to the side of the pencil on the outside so my I'm actually cutting the hole just a hair bigger than it needs to be because I know what's going to happen is this cedar is going to shrink and all of these gaps if I make them really tight now we'll have a nice gap later so I don't want to leave too much room [Music] now here's the trick for you when you're cutting back on a curve like this with the jigsaw you want to just hold yourself on an angle this way so it's grabbing the wood at the bottom or the blade will tend to bend okay and you'll end up with the top will be right on the line but the bottom will be sticking out and it won't fit in the hole so just a quick visual inspection here I saw just a spot here where I didn't get deep enough so I'm gonna just take my exacto knife I'm gonna clean up my edge just a note jigsaws don't have a break on them make sure the blade stops moving before you sat down and always set it down sideways oh that's a lesson you learn the hard way so what I'm doing now is I'm setting this board in place so it's not moving around and using this screw just to mark the middle of my stud or my joists sorry so then after I get all my deck boards in place it's a lot easier for me to know exactly where I'm going I don't have it all buried on me [Music] there you go you want the head just a little bit below the surface don't leave it out it'll look like junk what happens is that wood will end up swelling up over time and slowly close that hole over it'll be perfect so if you've watched our previous deck videos you've seen that I'm in love with the camo system and it's the kind of system that has its own handle and it feeds screws on an angle just below the rounded part on the edge on a 45 degree angle and it pins it down that way it keeps all the surface free and clear from screws and I love that but here because we were saving the old frame we weren't sure the condition of the wood and the truth is the top of the wood in a lot of places has experienced a little bit of rot and as a result I don't want to have to trust the camo screw to hold into soft lumber and keep my boards from warping so we're going with surfer screws on this one just because it's not brand new wood that's really the whole thinking behind this so ever going with 3-inch when we order the material we were taking to account that the wood on the surface might not be up to snuff and going with 3-inch just solves all that concern now it's also the cedar screw the brown one here's a note for you there's two kind of colors of screws in the market where we are there's green and brown and generally speaking pressure-treated lumber came and green up until recently now they have a brown pressure-treated lumber they still have a green pressure-treated lumber and here's what I'm gonna suggest I don't care what color your wood is you buy the brown screw alright if you buy green lumber use the brown screw it's going to look stupid for the first year but for the next 39 years of the deck life it'll be the same color as that pressure-treated lumber once the Sun has a chance to get at it for a little while if you use the green screw it'll look great for the first year and look stupid for the next 39 years the people are sticklers about putting the screw in exactly the same spot one inch off the edge has to be one inch off the edge if there's a knot in the wood one inch off the edge don't put a screw there okay find somewhere else to put that screw you have to get outside the rings of that knot all right if that knot was right here I'd be putting my first screw over here because I'm not screwing through a knot it's guaranteed to crumble and pop on you and if you have to let's say you have a knot right where you want to put your screw what you do is you mimic the camo screw system by drilling backwards underneath the curve until you set your angle that you want and then you can drive this screw and you can throw a screw in that way and that's a great way to get a screw to hold down the edge even if you have a knot here we go you see that pull nice and tight now we're going to be using the saw later to cut off the edge so it's better to fit all of your edges are screwed down first because that'll save you a whole lot of time and you won't have to screw around with it afterwards and risk splitting your wood so when I started to put in that screw I could feel the resistance of the knot and it was much further than what it was visible there so the knots probably gone an angle through the wood so what I did is I went into reverse and I burned it backwards pushing down through the wood once I cleared the knot then I drove it in this board isn't perfectly straight we know that because we took time to map it all out and what I've grabbed here is a board that's not straight to demonstrate how to install it now here's the secret when you have a board that's tight on both ends and the big gap is in the middle the the thing that I've seen a lot of guys do is they'll grab the board like this and the poet oh that's perfect put a screw in but what's not perfect is the ends are still touching wood to wood and it's really difficult to screw that last board exactly where you want it because even when you do that as soon as I start pulling here it doesn't close consistently and you don't want to just flip the board over because that's not the crown so we flip the board over the Crown's upside-down and we don't want to do that we don't have to so take the time stand the bad boy up and flip it over that way try not to destroy those now now that the board's flipped around I start pulling this tight you can see I can have a nice and tight here and then it opens up wide on your end it's a lot easier manipulate the end as you go along so because our gap is now perfect here and put my square that's gonna be the gap that I'm using I'm gonna use my tool to establish my gap on the whole project okay and of course I'm near the end so I'm gonna burn the screw in so since we're going to be putting a lot of pressure on the boards we're going to start screwing at the very ends so what you want to do you start your screw in the wood put it on reverse and push down while going backwards did you get a little bit smoke and you drive it down and it'll never split on you don't ask me to explain the science behind it I don't know I just know it works I learned that trick of all things from an electrician carpenter taught him I always nice when guys share their tips and tricks there's the smoke if you've ever tried putting screws in the end of a piece of cedar you know what splits 99 times out of 99 the fact that I just did four in a row means that I can make miracles this is the point where we can put some pressure on this wood and pull it forward okay the secret is if you close the gap too fast too aggressively at the beginning you're gonna have all your wood contact with each other but you should be able to close it just a little bit every board until you get to the end that's one way to straighten the board there is another way I'll show you that now let's get all of our straight ones out of the way just for the purpose of the demonstration we'll grab another hockey stick oh that's a beauty there's a nice gap down there but halfway it's gone okay so let me throw a few screws in this straighten it out and I'll come down and show you my other secret hit the crazy part here is the woods coming along and it comes back in and then it curves it really a lot of fun so what I gotta do is I gotta get this wide enough now to get this in here what's that over where I want it whew deal with it every joist [Music] so let's say for instance you're not in the greatest issue and you don't want to have to really hurt yourself and you're not alone let's say you're building a deck and your lovely wife is joining you and you need some help closing the boards here is a great trick our gap is only half an inch it's not that dramatic right but you want to put that square in there because I have two points of contact between my wood all right and this is why this works so well and we're gonna put this here perpendicular but we're gonna throw a little bit of degree on it a little bit of an angle okay so now my my force on the board is on the bottom part of the wood when I'm driving it over and it's as simple as putting that screw into the frame there we go and using it as a fulcrum so I set my screw here I'll set my screw here that's set my screw here now ladies this is something that's awesome you can do this all by yourself cuz you can sit on top of your deck get it off set up there's a one-person operation and you can just lean with your hand you can throw your shoulder into it okay and you close that gap until you're absolutely in love with it drive your screw don't release the pressure until you get all your through all right and then let off and hopefully the surface of your deck won't be that damaged and this is gonna be a little snug but it'll come up you're gonna find that when you do this this screw is gonna get buried in the wood and when you would go to back it out it'll most likely come up like this you don't want to leave this laying around set that screw right there on the wood and just push forward and it'll just pop right off that way no one ever steps on a screw and you can use the board over again and over and over and over again so just remember the secret here is the only curve you want to fix is when it's opening away at the end if you flip it over and it creates a rainbow in front of you you got the board on backwards flip the board around because that's the easy way to manipulate the wood trying to close the middle is always a real real frustration and you're never going to get the ends with the gap properly this way you're guaranteed to have a consistent gap and you only need to have one little three-foot piece of wood extra laying around to help you do it so do-it-yourself trick but it's a lot more fast if you it's a lot more fast it's a it's a do-it-yourselfer trick but it's a lot of fun if you have someone helping you out with that it makes a deck job go real quick even if your woods lousy so one last quick tip before I let you go and we jump into this deck here when you're screwing your wood down a lousy piece of what that is set your tip where you want it and then put your hand on the back here drill have some nice downward pressure and I'll tell you why right there that's perfect you got lots of control if you're going single handed and your drill ever slips off that screw because you're pushing down so hard with one hand it'll skip off and put a big hole in your wood like that you don't want that in your pretty deck so instead of pushing really hard with one hand you can just go and keep that keep the contact between the the drill bit and the screw with your left hand and then you don't have to push so hard and even if you slip off you can catch yourself alright that's a great tip for beginners just to make sure that you aren't going to punch a bunch of holes in your wood you'd be surprised how many times just slip out of that screw there coated so sometimes the filler the head gets filled up with the coating and it's not quite as teddy to think until you start putting a lot of pressure on it and then disaster strikes [Music] we are down to our last two deck boards to go on here and of course the last one is scribed in it's all specialty detail cuts and we have an angle we want to get underneath the window trim over there so you'll find that when you get your piece cut and you think you're ready to go it's just no way to get that wedged in there so that's why a second of last board you don't screw in now you can use this technique when you're doing flooring of all kinds as well cut the board lay it in so you could have something to measure from but then go back and install the other piece first and then you can go back and install this one because this is a lot are you gonna slide in boom no it's the matter screwing them down come work done no I got one more trick for you max you remember we separated all of our boards are good and bad so these are the the bad and the ugly and we're gonna start throwing a screw over here I'm going to show you a technique now you don't want to rely on this but it is effective and that is you take you screw on a significant angle get us started okay take your pry bar and before you screw it down lift it up and then just measure what you're doing here get about 1/4 that screw through the hole on the bottom until it's in contact with the way now that screws on an angle contacting that wood with a space and we all know that when we tighten this up it's gonna pull the wood closed ready screwing magic ok so just to recap because we set our posts inside our frame our frame is inch and a half so included this plus I want a one inch overhang which is the actual thickness of five quarter board it's amazing how nothing is the same dimension as what it says on the package you know we're gonna just go like this and I've lined it up over there as well nothing is really as straight as it should be around here but I think at the end of the day when we're all done it's gonna have a really nice look and no one's gonna know if there's a little coming and going with the skirt overhang [Music] all right so I'm just using the fine to saw this is actually a cheat this is my PVC saw for plumbing but comes in so handy with software lumber this is annoying alright so that's pretty much covers everything you need to know for tips and tricks for laying down deck boards remember spacing is important but more important is being patient and being happy with every piece you install because it's really hard to go back and fix it later if you get irritated after the fact okay so now it's time to go on to handrails and stairs alright 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 a beautiful years to come we're going to 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 that'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 gonna use two by six and make a couple of boxes tied together some no one slips and voila we 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 49 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 49 and a half and I cut in my top rail 49 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 49 and three-eighths we're gonna 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 going to 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 it turns out to be half an inch so I got to take that off of my measurement remember we were what 49 and three eighths minus half is I have 48 and 7/8 good yes so we're gonna cut two pieces 40 and 7/8 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 have find 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 old 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 two-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 gap 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 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 mend the reins if you're pounding it indirectly you leave all your wood with all kinds of lead ends so that's a good way to distribute the weight we have an attached standing here yeah which is good oh 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 try after rain so now the height of this bracket attached to it that's the perfect job of setting that up it's almost too stupidly lucky I mean now these screws go in at 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 back side because that's where you want most of your strength it's keeping it from falling over this is the best part of the job okay now watch this I'm gonna hug this up nice and tight [Music] yeah 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 your railing and 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 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 our 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 of 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 cuz 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 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 a cut on the inside so I'm going to flip my board over which means I'm gonna have a rough edge on to both sides of the board but 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 is 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 if you over sand this after it gets wet in the next rainstorm it'll get all Carini on you and you 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 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 [Music] [Applause] so 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 all right 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 2-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 size of the drill is gonna come in contact with the railing 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 that's buried 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 posts 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 going to 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 at rail 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 and 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 just takes a little bit longer but still very effective okay you see how long that that hole is traditionally when 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 we just set our screw here 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] [Music] now I know what somebody you're gonna be sinking you're gonna be thinking oh we should drill all the way through until we get the 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 gonna 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 8 inch screw in there but dear Lord that's a lot of work to avoid having some post into the throat into the framing very important when it comes time to do your skirting it's know which kind you want to go with here we're gonna go with more of a solid skirt we're looking for animal control because we don't get direct Sun in this area we're not so concerned about air passing through if you do get direct Sun I would suggest going with like a privacy lattice so you get a little bit of large animal control and wind but since we don't need that here we're gonna go for a nice clean look and what to two recommendations right off the bat a lot of times when you buy this kind of skirt board the end boards have got an angle on them they're not cut square out of the factory and I don't know why so when you're gonna do your measuring and cutting for your skirt always make sure you trim your first edge before you get started and then after that you should be good now if you remember the demo demolition video the very beginning the wood that was on this deck was cedar just like we're using now but it was buried in the dirt and so I'm very important you don't want your cedar in the organics so when you're measuring off leave an airspace and when you come to finish this if you want to finish garden and you don't want to have an airspace there go and get some clear stone pebbles or River stone and use that to build up behind your gardens up against your deck if you want to close off that animal trap don't ever push your dirt back up against this you're gonna promote and then you're just gonna shorten the lamps lifespan of your deck that works they've got a nice gap under here I can get my hand underneath the other thing you want to think about is decoratively speaking you don't want to have them meeting up like that you want one covering the other and I would always suggest that the place that you want it to be the prettiest is the one you want to put on the last so this is our street view so we'll put that on last we're gonna start here with this one just line things up make sure you're happy with the way it finishes set your knee on there for some pressure grab a couple of screws and set this board if it's at all possible two inches away from the edge is a really good place to go it'll help promote not splitting it and this entire row of boards you want to have the same height from the top so if you need to you can mark it but I just like to have a steady line I'll go across and I'll just eyeball it one to the next now the bottom board same rule applies take a look at the entire length of the skirt your your board that you're attaching to should be somewhat level take the highest reference about a half inch down from that nice and easy here again putting this screw flush with the wood you don't want to bury it okay this is a screw that you want to be able to pull out if you ever need to get access underneath your deck so if you bury it there's a little swell and then when you try to take it out you'll destroy your wood so this is a great way to start and then you'll be fine to access underneath the deck if you ever want to get under there for any reason the reason we're starting at the outside corner with a full board is so that it's pretty pretty is important which leads me to the next point when you cut your board you'll have one clean side from your saw blade and you'll have one rough side install the clean side out we're looking for that consistency of two inches down so just the last couple of finishing touches here start on your corner measure off to both the middle and try to try to adjust the ground to be consistent so the boards are all the same height you don't want to have to cut every board up and down just take a shovel and clean a trough put this in consistently when you get near the middle stop start at the other end with a full board and come towards the middle again I'll show you why if when you get to the middle you're left with a gap like this you don't want to cut a board to fit that hole that's that nasty what you do is you take the total amount of width of all of this these two boards plus the gap divide it by three and then cut three boards the same width it's still all three of those here and that'll make that gap just take a probably 3/4 of an inch off of this board this port on this board and then you won't even notice that the boards are a different size and you won't get stuck with a little sliver one of the ends and don't forget finish your entire skirt before you start building your stairs one because it's really hard to work behind the staircase and two if you put your skirt up to this area up to where the stairs are you have to close the side of the stairs right to the ground or you lose the ability to maintain your critters so finish the entire skirt and then it'll be stare time all right so now it comes time for the stairs and you've got a couple of options out there whenever you're dealing with black metal is for your finishing work you can always go to the building store and they'll have pre-made black metal stair risers for you and you just screw the deck boards from underneath into that that's a doable system but only if you've got the same sort of height requirements as a traditional 8 inch rise step so if it's a little bit different you gotta do something custom then that's not gonna be any good for you you can always buy the wooden ones that come pre-made as well and you can shave the top and bottom a little bit but remember code in most places and what people are used to is that every step is the same height rise and run length so if you start making modifications like that you get up with really long odd kind of shape steps and the natural function of people going up and down stairs is a is abruptly changed so you can be coming down stairs engaged in conversation not paying attention and almost all over yourself just because the heights wrong so what you want to do is you want to make sure every step is exactly the same give or take about a quarter inch on exterior applications I would even go give or take a half an inch just to make life simple okay now our total height including the deck itself is around eighteen and a half okay so we're gonna make our stairs based on eighteen as our measurement just because there's a lot of unevenness going on here and we do have the ability to shim a little bit in order to get the height we want so 18 divided by three right is six hope yup and cut on my math before so we want a six inch rise now a two by six is a five and a half inch and the deck board is one that gives me six and a half and that is pretty close to what I want considering this is actually eighteen and a half and I did the math on eighteen so if I just made a box which I've pre-cut here and then put deck boards on top of it I end up with a six and a half inch rise times two all right that's thirteen and off eight that's another six and a half under the step that will actually end up being perfect it's just lucky we got it that way and one of the reasons why it is so is because the house had the original stairs built there for two steps and so that was set up to be similar rise and run and so what we've done by building a level deck is extended that same math to a different part of the entranceway and so since the ground is pretty much level we end up with a similar result so if you have a situation in your house where you have two perfectly good steps up to your house and you want to add a deck finish your deck at the same height your last step is and you'll be fine too now I am thinking of the street when you're looking at my stair because I'm making all of this out of cedar I'm not going to finish it with any other surface boards other than the top so what I've done is I've created a little bit of blocking I'm just gonna map this out so it makes some sense okay we can visualize this together and the back actually sits inside the two of the outsides okay so the only time you can see the joint is from the side of the building not from the front and you only see one joint and I closed off that side basically what's gonna happen after that is we're gonna put five quarter-inch board on that gives me a nice 10-inch step with a little bit of a lip and then I'll have another box hill right here you start to see what's happening here okay and I've got the little blocks here for that box as well so I'm gonna build both boxes independently put down the first one level it drop the second box on we'll throw a couple screws into the skirt to hold it all together and then we'll finish it all together give it a quick sand and we'll be able to take our last post put it inside the framework right to the ground and attach it from all three pieces of the framework plus the handrail and that'll really make this stairs part of the deck and support the upper rails here with that triangle effect we're looking for remember when you're building something outside just see the end from the beginning take some time to pencil it out think it out and you'll be fine - this is not that difficult building box stairs is the easiest way to do it it also takes a little bit more material so if you wanted to cut stringers we had a video in our our video series on our last tech project to show you how to do that but this is quick and simple the math is easy and it's one of my favorite ways to throw a quick set of stairs together so I try to keep the homeowners in mind when I'm designing these things and doing videos I try to use the same sort of building materials and tools you're gonna have access to there are faster ways to build framing air tools and all that sort of thing with the proper rear exterior fasteners but to be totally honest I know most people don't have access to those kinds of tools and why would you how often in your life are you gonna be framing a deck now when you're putting your box in before you finish your frame and put in your post you want to just make sure you mark off your level all right so before we get going we have frame working behind we've attached our skirt so we're using three inch screws to tie in we're gonna fall five or six in there just for a safety make sure we've got at least four or 500 pounds of this shear strength on those screws and then we're gonna take this level off and we also want to make sure that we're not just level left to right the front to back we don't want to be level here we want to have our stairs just the back just a little bit down remember it's always a lot more comfortable if you're going up stairs if you're being leaning forward a little bit more cuz that's the direction you're heading the back is too high in you're off level you feel thrown off the stairs and it's dangerous so it's always better to have just a 1 degree slope back towards the building that's my lathe ATS my level line okay so now what I'm looking for is square so by putting my level up against both these posts there's no way that it's gonna be contact with the whole side of the post on both posts unless it's relatively square and that position is actually really perfect again very nice and because it's all closed up even if it's out a little bit it's not gonna matter I just want to make sure that when I put my rail in all my woods gonna line up and it's not going to be opening up or in case I got a shift my box remember if it dries a little bit twisted while you're building putting your stairs a little bit off square may actually help you to solve the problem with the making your sugar your lumber on your railings is all nice and tight the post is already set at the base we know it's really nice spot one screw in the bottom corner now what I want to do is I would just want to use my line of sight and line up this post with the other one for plumb I don't want to rely on anything other than my eyes here because this post will be judged for that post and if that one's out a little bit after everything we've done here if this one's out the same amount it'll be totally show you why I'm doing this the same reason we did in the deck with our post so now I'm not relying on the screws if someone is pulling on the rail this way I've actually got blocking so I'm multiplying the amount of points of contact that the screws have and making it very very difficult for that wood to be pulled apart I daresay you won't find anybody who's able to just walk over and rip this apart they're gonna need some serious tools so now this post is built into the frame the frame is attached to the frame of the deck and that is really really solid when I get the handrail on there it's gonna be invincible testimony to the guy that put these papers down originally not too often you see this but I built my stare directly on these pavers and I have these two posts cut exactly the same length and they're sitting on the paver inside the box screwed them together check that out folks if you start level you build level so once I've cut my trace piece out I'm gonna bring it over here line up my holes I'm gonna eyeball that just for posterity and I'm gonna bring that mark across no this is my bottom coming from the rail okay I'm gonna line that up like that and I'm going to extend that trace line and you can see that it'll actually make some sense so that's where it goes okay you see how my line is perpendicular if I was a lift that's straight up in the air that hole will be directly above that hole the gap remains constant now that makes a little bit more sense in there so we'll cut it on the same angle yes yes I believe we have something we're talking about now so now we got our box in place of my second box on and I'm just covering it with a the five quarter board just a thought here real quick the framework on the second box isn't lined up in the same place to the first box so when I'm putting my screws in all my screws are gonna follow all the way up just a thought because people see the screw heads so it's got to be considered as part of the design element or it'll be really noticeable and of course like with any softwood lumber when you get near the edges boards not closing nicely so we just lift this end up and then start screwing on an angle and now it's contact the wood with a gap and watch it close there we go so I made all my box is the same size I cut all my floor boards first I'm lining up so when I'm building this and I have to work my way around I got to do a little jigsaw where I can set my 2x4 here and make sure that all my boards are flush before I make my Martha right we just get this over here what we're gonna do right now is demonstrate a simple railing system that is attractive and forgiving which is important it's also incredibly strong so what we have is our four by four posts I remember our rule as long as we're installing things really strong in the base and relatively plumb we can manipulate the tops to close so we always cut the bottom on top of our rails the same even on the stairs don't get into that habit of trying to trace the top rail and cut it separately just cut the bottom invert the board follow the line trace it out just like this so what we do same thing right we dropped it on we trace it I got my measurement now I'm going nosing and nosing to get my measurement okay because that's a great angle to work with it's easy to work with and then I'm taking off that half-inch for the depth of our caps okay now I've got that board and you can see that my pieces are different I've lined up the holes I roll them over I trace that bottom line across the top floor and then I cut it now I've got my bottom on top you can double-check set them on there they should be pretty straight if they're not don't worry we still have that forgiving effect of the screwing it all together now what you want to do is this screw your end capsule now for the bottom rail I suggest going flush at the top and with the top rail make sure you're not sticking higher because you're still going to put it two by four cap across this so make sure you're no more than flush all right once you get all those screwed together we can assemble the really is that you can see this cap is very forgiving for putting in a screwing angle it'll still sink flush so you weren't going to have any problems with that [Music] the ideas they're trying to make that screw long enough to operate even 40 years from now when the deck is completely rotted out these screws are still gonna be holding onto something it's a little bit overkill but overkill isn't all that bad of a concept so for assembly your bottom rail although we use the the noses to rest it on order to set the angle lift it up about an inch get it off less would would contact your having your deck the longer it will last drive that cap screw in there set this and get rid of the twist these are awesome now listen we are gonna go through this again these comes set for a traditional 42 inch railing system which is great if you're building something to code so somebody doesn't fall off your stairs and plunge to their ultimate demise but what we're doing is just creating a safety railing for Grandma to come home and visit and she's not all that tall so what we did is we took the top off and I ran it through the saw this is just aluminum and this powder-coated so boom we cut it down so that when grandmas climbing this railing she isn't wholly railing above her head that's obviously 42 inches that's that's hard most older people don't have a lot of strength in their shoulders and they're using their bicep and tricep muscles when they're going up a railing and so when you're setting safety rails and bathrooms it's usually pretty low so they can have their arms straight to their body and they can grab something like this okay so if your handrail is up like this even if she's holding onto it and she slips she's gonna let go she doesn't have the strength to hold her body weight if she slips at that part angle so make sure when you've got a railing and you're thinking about older people cut it down if you got an opportunity if you don't make it extra wide and put on a second handrail for them we just drop this bad boy in here one at a time there's really no rhyme or reason to this feels really sloppy and stupid but when you get to a point where you happy just beat the crap out of it until it all fits nice and it all twist it into place start at the top line it up in the middle set your screw and set it down get downward pressure on that top row there we go I'll help pull it nice and tight and then do the same to the bottom get it in position well I can't find that happy place here we go one more time deaf here we go downward on the angle [Music] so we have our entire railing system set up at 31 and a half degrees so in order to do the top plate the first thing you want to do is cut one end of 31 and a half degrees so what you want to do is just get down here close one I get a weird look on your face line that up and then mark it when you get back line up with your 31 and 1/2 degrees because it'll be exactly the same all right and this point here and this point here should be the same as the bottom if you're a mark on the pencil is wrong go with the longest part of your mark and then we'll double check because if you cut it too long it won't fit into place and it won't but that's fine because I can cut it shorter I can't cut it even longer the second time make sense no daylight through there that is perfect loving it so I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just create flush to flush here and here relatively speaking I'm gonna trace this oh that was really well done that was really good to see what how many why would I give four three hands all right I'll do the same on the other side flush to flush so in a perfect world this supposed to be just a little bit taller but this is why the system is forgiving because we're using a five quarter board to cap all this so I got an inch over lang overhang and as you can see over here it extends so far past the post that there's no traditional line of sight where you can see if you have any minor gaps or anything around so it really is forgiving for junior carpenters such as myself this is the part of the job where I really piss off the safety trolls ah yes I'm using my saw without a pair of glasses cuz I'd like to be able to see what I'm doing when I'm doing crazy things like this now I'm gonna line up my cut I'm holding my my safety blade my guard out of the way I'll line this up and I'm gonna go [Music] and [Music] much better and from the other side and the other angle oh if you're like I'm auditioning for America's Got Talent look at that do I get a golden buzzer there we go ladies and gentlemen of the jury remember I want to line this up so I'm not drilling into any of the hardware from the railing going down the middle three spots just so that it doesn't bow on me my battery's starting to run a little bit low let's get this really perfect little torque I'm gonna take this one extra step I'm gonna put it right into the post help line it all up all right it's not really necessary but I usually put a screw on the side to tie to this post too but I'm noticing that my two by fours got a natural occurring crack go throw a screw in it it's just gonna make it split so I'm gonna leave it alone here's my top plate I need my 31 and a half degree angle if I measure like this I'm actually gonna have something a lot longer so if you want to measure this one the way you do it is you roll it over and you put it up now you're measuring top side to top side okay there we go [Music] [Applause] now we put our 45 on in a little bit where it comes to the rail districts often [Music] look mama without a map [Music] [Music] same thing now if it doesn't grab really good and close that gap the first time just back up the screw and drive it again when the grandmas come you let them know this is all for them you can get out of it max so thank you for joining us on our a tizzy series on how to restore a deck that you thought was hopeless we have got a lot of projects in our a tizzy playlists for you so if you're a home renovation DIY kind of guru person and you want to get your hands dirty and fix your house up then join us in that playlist cuz we can show you how to fix your basements your bathrooms your kitchens anything that's in your home we've got a video for you now this video is gonna have a little bit more tagged on the end because max is gonna demonstrate how he seals this deck in a few weeks from now and he's gonna tag that on the end of the video so stay tuned for that it's a great system he seals it it keeps the water from penetrating into the wood and it keeps it from going great so it's low low maintenance this is about the most low maintenance program that you can get so forget spending all your money on all of that fancy baked would get yourself some real number find out how to seal it and you're gonna be so happy with the result now listen if you haven't subscribed to our channel before do so hit the button in the corner and if you liked it please give us a thumbs up we need to get this feedback so we know what to bring you in the future don't forget to check us out on Instagram at home renovation DIY and we will see you again next time [Music]

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 1,248,156

Rating: 4.7113266 out of 5

Keywords: home renovision, jeff thorman, how to builf a deck, deck building, save your deck, economical deck, deck rebuild, deck railings, deck stairs, deck skirt, hand rails, handrails, structure, deck block, how to build a deck, how to build a deck in a weekend, building a deck, build a deck, diy deck, deck, build deck, diy deck building, deck build, deck diy

Id: Z5s7NGb0cqw

Length: 120min 41sec (7241 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 24 2018