How To Install Stairwell Handrail & Soleplate

hey everyone shannon here from houseimprovements.com in this video i want to show you how to install stairwell handrail so we've got a stairwell here and we are going to put handrail along two sides we've actually got three videos for this particular job we've got one showing how to install these posts uh we're gonna have one showing putting in the hand rails and the sole plate on the floor and another one showing putting in the iron balusters so stay tuned and let's have a look okay so um if you refer back to my other video where i show how to install these the new posts in that video i talk about how to determine where you want to put your poles and and this railing and everything so just refer back to that that's kind of your starting point anyways for this process and from here on we're going to be dealing solely with putting in the actual handrail and the bottom sole plate that goes on the floor okay so i've loosened my posts off because i kind of need them to be a little bit movable while i do this i'm going to install this section here first this small piece you might have noticed in these two poles i've already got studs in there to connect the handrail but this is the stud i've got to put one more in here so it has a coarse threaded end here that that fastens into the post and then there's a machine screw thread here for a nut that goes on so this is going to be in the pole in the post i mean and uh the handrail will slip over the end and then there's this uh piece here that fits over with the nut and you tighten it all up and that's that's the connection for the handrail to the posts and then to cover up the holes which i'll show you after there's a there's a plug wooden plug to match so so anyways i i don't have this one stud in here but uh they're pretty simple just use a pair of vice grips and uh clamp onto the fine threaded part closer to the where the two threads change you don't want to clamp on too far out here because that's where your knot's got to go on and if you mess up those three heads then it's not gonna work very well so i pre-drilled the hole here um it depends on which size of the this you have for your hole so i won't even talk about the size of the hole i guess pre-drill according to what you have it takes a little bit to kind of get it to start in there it's easier if i laid it on a table but once it starts it'll grab and just thread in so you want to thread it right in until those coarse threads disappear try not to scratch your post swinging the vice grips by okay so that's going to be pretty good okay i've got this post loose just because i'm going to need that that way to get things kind of assembled here now so we've got our two full posts over here and over here on the wall we're going to have a half new so it's generally you're going to use one that's half as thick and in our case we've got no wood or anything up in the upper area to attach to so i'm going to use a butterfly bolt hollow wall anchor type thing so i've got that all kind of pre-drilled in here so that's this hole i'm going to put a wood plug in there afterwards down at the bottom down here i will be able to get a wood screw through the post and into the bottom plate of the wall and it'll be hidden by the sole plate which is a wood base that's going to sit out here between the posts so i've pre-drilled a hole there and countersunk it so that's all ready this hole here is going to be where i put a screw through the back side it's going to come through and into the end of the handrail instead of using one of those type of bolts i can simply use a screw for this so that's the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to attach the hand rail all this stuff i've already pre marked it out cut it drilled all the holes and stuff because uh your situation is going to be different than mine so giving you measurements that i'm using probably isn't going to mean anything to your project but basically what i did is i figured out the height of my balusters that are going to go in here total height marked that on this post and drilled that hole according to where it will be in here in this case i'm up i'm going to be up 7 8 of an inch from the bottom of the handrail to the center of my hole so you just got to figure all your situation out for what you want to do but the first thing i want to do is basically put these two pieces together so i'll get this a little awkward by myself here but we'll get this screw started in and poking out so i can see what i'm doing okay so i've got the point of the screw sticking through there so i can line it up with the hole i've already drilled here and that hole is just to keep you from splitting the handrail just relieves some of the pressure instead of driving that screw right in there come on where are you i need a little bit more sticking out [Applause] oh you know what i didn't do i didn't countersink the back side of this so that this head of the screw will be flush i need this to go flat to the drywall so i need to do that do that quick and i'll be right back okay so i just drilled a hole there on the back side so that this head of this screw will sink in and not be protruding through it doesn't have to look pretty because nobody's going to see this after see if we can manage this now okay so we've got that attached now you can see that i've centered the handrail in the width of the post generally your new posts are going to be wider than the handrail so centered it up and like i said i've got this uh butterfly bolt on the back side that i've got to put through this larger hole here and i'll be able to drive a wood screw in the bottom now the reason i've got this loose is so that once i have this over there all on the wall i'm hoping i can tilt this big post out far enough to get the bolt into this hole that i machined in the the end of the rail so there's going to be that bolt going in that hole and then if i can show you here i've drilled this larger one-inch hole at the bottom the bolt to go in here i'll be able to see the threads there get the nut started on and tighten it up and that's what is going to connect this to that pole okay and again i'm not talking about any of the measurements because depending on which fasteners you get it's all going to be different likely than what i have anyways now i've got marks on the floor so i know where the the front side of this post is going to be it's going to be on this red chalk line i don't know if you can make that out and height wise my butterfly should line up with that hole and it does so i think that's all good and i want to put just a little bit of adhesive on the back of this to help hold it as well it'll just stick it right onto the drywall if you had wood in there it'd be a little simpler we could just use wood screws and screw it to the wall but i don't need much just a little bit extra something to grab there i just want to make sure i don't smear it all over the wall here so with any butterfly i've gotta collapse it and start it into the hole oops you're able to see okay and the butterfly will open up inside there now while i'm at it i'm just going to get this kind of in there to help hold things up for me so part way there so like i said i've got this mark down on the floor i know that's where the bottom of my bottom face of this half new is going to be so i can probably just put this screw in and then i'll plumb the pole up and tighten that butterfly okay so that's one [Applause] okay once that adhesive grabs a hold of there it'll help hold everything tight there too okay and we've got this end we've got it onto the bolt and what happens over here is i've got to get all this stuff up in that hole and onto the end of the bolt we're going to try to get you a little better look it's kind of awkward to to show this but you can see the hole you can see the stud up there sticking through and now i've got to try to get this nut on the end there somehow it's very awkward i think i got it started i'll try to spin it with my finger a little bit to get it on there more there we go okay so i've got it started on there and now i can tighten it up a little bit okay that drawed that nice and tight now the one thing i didn't do was see if the handrail was sitting square here it's pretty good there got lucky but i should have just double checked that that was sitting straight and wasn't twisted otherwise i just have to loosen that off and twist it straight again okay so we've got uh got that piece of handrail on now actually i think i was gonna put the shoe piece on but i think actually i might as well just continue with the handrail here and i should be able to slip those shoes in there uh after the fact so let's uh probably get the camera in a little different angle and continue with the handrail on this side okay so we got that short little piece of handrail done now i think i should be able to pop this piece on and getting it get it tightened up if i can get it started by myself and again this one's all machined on the bottom and the ends like the other one was okay so i'm going to go ahead and get these bolts in and get that tightened up okay one of the final things i'm going to show you today then is to put on this shoe molding or base molding and i've already got it cut to fit obviously so i've got it notched around any posts and there's a small miter back behind this post you probably can't see it's right there so i've got i i made this you can buy different ones but i made this to work for this application and i've got it set up so it'll be flush to the front of all the posts on the outside and it hangs off on the inside in the opening just a little bit so that i can add a molding layer underneath it to cover the edge of the tattered up drywall so i've kind of got these posts still loose so that i can manipulate them a little bit until i'm happy with how all this is going to fit we'll put that in there again depending on your situation or how you're doing yours this may not be identical obviously so but yeah so i've got things nice and flush out here out there at the other ends and then obviously down here at the end as well so i'm pretty happy with that fit i'm just going to use a few brad nails to hold that in place and once i go to do my balusters i'll drive the odd screw in right underneath the baluster to you know permanently secure it and my air pressure must not be air pressure or my gun oh my guns deep i'm not too sure got lots of air pressure so that one sunk and i'm going to put a little bit of glue in the miter joint here just some wood glue so [Applause] [Applause] okay now one of the last things i'm gonna just show you is all those larger holes that we used for the different fastening devices that we had we're going to put a wood plug in as i mentioned before so i'm going to put this one in here and just put a little bit of glue on it and when you put plugs like this in you want to kind of look at the green this one you can't really tell but sometimes on the bigger ones you can see the green whoops so you want to orientate it same as what's on the wood that you're that you're putting it into just put it in there wipe off the excess sometimes they'll sit out and protrude just a little bit and if it does just sand it after this one's going to just sit in there nice so you go along you put ones in up there and in the posts where those bigger holes are just glue them all in and and they'll be fine so that's the basics the basics here of the wooden part of this railing look for my next video we're going to install the install these baluster this style of baluster inside here and we'll show you how to do that but for right now that's that's this video i'm glad that you watched and i hope that you click the thumbs up button uh subscribe if you aren't a subscriber to our channel and also we're going to have links in the description for uh things like our facebook page our patreon paypal those sorts of things and uh yeah we'll also as these other videos come available we'll put links to them as well because they'll be the one for the posts and the one that you just watched and then one to install the balusters thanks a lot for watching

Channel: HouseImprovements

Views: 23,979

Rating: 4.9672132 out of 5

Keywords: DIY, House, home, improve, reno, fix, replace, how, to, install, attach, handrail, sole, plate, base, guard, rail, railing, wood, stairwell, balcony, stair, level, stairs, interior, wooden, systems, step by step

Id: lYLg1ZKn-6A

Length: 18min 25sec (1105 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 25 2021