Installing a Staircase Guard Railing & Hardwood Floor Patching - DIY Homeowner Problem Solving

i recently posted a video about the massive improvements we made to the top floor of our house in it you can see the transition this guard railing went through but i didn't spend any time explaining it because there was just too much to cover if you haven't already go check that video out so you're all caught up and ready to see how i take this thing from an ugly half a wall to a nice modern guard railing alright guys that ugly ugly half a wall is gone and i moved all the electrical that you probably saw coming out into this corner and i just finished doing the first round of mudding on it so this is going to take a couple more coats before i have it right and it's going to be tied in but now i've got my switch and my outlet that did have wires coming out floating and nothing here now i have to start worrying about the floor now the intention here is to move the hardwood all the way over to hanging over the drywall on the staircase just a little bit so that there's just gonna be a little piece of trim underneath there that'll be the transition and it's gonna look pretty nice and then we'll have spindles uh balusters and a newer post at the far end and we'll have this cool open railing in here but first i gotta fix the floor so i'm gonna bring you in closer and show you what's going on with the hardwood and then show you how i'm gonna attempt to fix it so looking this way at the uphill side of the staircase you can see which direction the tongue and groove uh floor slats are going so we've got the tongue and the groove so the tongue is pointing that way the groove is pointing that way so to get it out we have to figure out where the nails are now they would have blind nailed most of this and i'm assuming that they went in this direction and hid the nails inside the grooves now if we come over here to this first board which you can see is all kinds of just rough sawn especially right there they just sort of hacked it so it would fit in alongside the wall that we took out so if we look really close this very edge they actually just nailed right straight through the top there's a nail there's a nail so how do i pop this out without ruining the tongue on the other side i took the circular saw and cut a groove in here along that edge on the other side of those nails that i can see now i should be able to just pry this out and have a much better idea of what i'm working with going forward so you can see here i cut out all the way to the end of a piece that way i can stagger these and they don't look like i just dropped them all right in place and this is the piece that i cut out it came out of there that direction i managed to save the tongue in the groove on both sides so we're in good shape i cut out this direction thinking that there was another nail in the middle there was no nail in the middle all the nails were coming in from the tongue side so i believe i said before i think they would come in from the groove this is based on no research no information whatsoever i just thought that's where you would hide it clearly they put it in on the tongue side because i cut right through one i didn't even notice i must have a combination blade in there because it worked just fine cut the nail and the whole thing just came right out so now that i know that i can start putting strips in this whole length i put this first chunk in without showing you because i needed to figure it out for myself but it went in really easily and looks pretty darn tight at both of the corners starting at this end that's the longest piece and i basically set it in down here and then took a dead blow and tapped it in until it hit hard up against that joint and then i did the same thing on that far end and then i cut this one in the middle to be pretty close to the exact width and then came up here and it was just a hair long so i shaved just a little bit off again and because i had access from this side i was able to just slide it in between the two then i toenailed these nails in so pre-drilled at an angle and then nailed them down to hold them in place and keep them from coming this way i've got these staggered so they don't look like i just put in a line here this chunk is going to end up getting covered up by the newel post so it doesn't really matter so [Applause] this piece of tape is here and i've got it marked with locations of the nails that are in the subfloor so i made sure i didn't put any of my new nails into those exact same locations because if you get a nail in halfway through a board and then hit the next nail you're not going any further so now this board is not going anywhere it looks pretty nice refinishing the floors will help a lot because they'll smooth out the rough spots and then all the finish will match obviously but and then the top of the stairs is right there too now eventually we're going to redo the stair treads and risers and this piece was going up behind this nosing strip and i broke it out now so that i didn't wreck this in the future so this piece is just temporary for strength so that when you step on the edge of this it doesn't want to snap off or break off where i just put those nails in so this will eventually come out and be replaced with a full length riser full height riser now in the garage i put this round over on starting at this corner because i knew i couldn't get all the way to the corner same thing with that i rounded over all the way up to here and quit and here and quit because i wanted to get these installed and exactly in place with each other so now i can finish out routing this round over in this corner and it'll match [Music] perfectly [Music] so total height for the staircase guard rail has to be 36 or higher i took a look at it 36 felt low for kids running back and forth across it to me so what we're doing is i've already cut my spindle to 38 inches so we're a little bit taller than what code says i have to be but then in addition you have the rail itself is about two and three eighths inch total height well yeah two and eight inch none of these dimensions really matter to you but here's how i'm figuring out what i'm gonna end up doing because if you look at this if i make this flush this thing is ridiculously tall it's just way way too high to leave it exactly where it is i mean we're looking at 56 and a half inches total height that's too much what i'm trying to figure out is i need my railing to run into the newel post right about there if that's what i want and i need to cut this down to that height i'm just going to take this that's already the right height we can ignore the stud because that's going to get stunk sunk into the floor put that right about there i realize this is not very precise but by eyeballing things against each other i know exactly wherever this line is i know that this line right here is going to give me what i want out of this so now i can cut 11 and a half inches off of this and get this thing to the exact height that i need it to be the other thing i need to know for sure is that i need a flat spot 25 inches up from the bottom for the hand the angled handrail coming up the stairs to anchor into so if i cut that at that mark and measure here 25 and a half falls right in the middle of the giant flat spot so all of our bases are covered i can go and cut this thing and feel pretty confident that i didn't make a big mistake i would like to point out i have no idea what i'm doing i'm making this up as i go along but making sure that it's up to code and safe and the process that which i get there is oh we'll see what happens and just to make sure i'm really happy about it we'll double check square nice check 90 degrees from that nice that bottom is perfectly square i'm happy okay so back inside and ready to set the new post i marked up where i wanted to go uh and i spared you that because it was just a lot of putzing around the one thing i will say is that right here along the center line there's actually a double floor joist that i ran into when i was putting the new hardwood down so right here and right here running this whole width of this hallway is a double floor joist and i want to get to that to help make this even stronger now the newel post is hollow at the base with this solid core the idea is you get this set in place and run screws in from all directions to get this nice and strong and then you slip this the post back down over the top of it and then run screws into it and that should make it pretty strong i've got two growing boys that i think are going to use this thing as a boomerang to accelerate down the hallway so i want it to be even stronger than that so like i said i want to get down into the floor joist so what i need to do is drill a hole that goes down into it and i'm going to set a dowel about a one inch like old broom handle dowel into the floor joist and into the bottom of this block so that it is secured down several more inches than just right here at the surface so to set this i'm going to put the block in and actually set it up just a little bit too high so it's not all the way down and that'll make sense in a second to lock that thing in then i'm going to put just a drop just a drop of ca glue on that side and on that side so that it can't quite touch the frame and it's not going to be able to touch that we'll throw the accelerator on that and then with it hovering over the glue not actually touching anything i can line this back up exactly where i had it and that block will drop down onto my glue there i heard it drop now since i'm not actively pushing down on it i'm going to let it sit for just a little bit longer and then i'm going to very carefully pull this back off and that block will be sitting exactly where it needs to be and then we can take the next step perfect now i know that i want it right exactly on this line so it's in the center of those two floor joists and this direction truly doesn't matter much i'm just going to try to get pretty centered so now we know where i want this hole but since it's not centered how do i find where i want this on here well uh with a dowel centering pin i can go ahead and drill just a little hole and i can put that down in there and then i line this back up kind of on its marks and now i have you can see where center is you can see where my dowel is so it's close to center but it's not perfectly centered so if i had gone with center my whole thing would be off by a little bit in this direction and it's kind of important to get it lined up just right so now i have this whole location and this whole location figured out i can go start drilling stuff that's as deep as i can go with the bits i have so that's in it will get glued in it will get screwed in from all directions right now i just need it enough in that i can start figuring out the rest of the rails at this point i have all the holes drilled i have kind of checked the spacing i've made sure everything's going to be right i did slide the new post off of that plug and glued everything back in place the newel post itself can still slide up and down and i think that's going to be important for getting the railing and all of the spindles all sorted out in order to tie the hand railing to the two ends to the wall and to the post i drilled a three-quarter inch hole straight down through the bottom not all the way through just in partially so that i could also drill an angled hole out the other side so this way i can come in from the bottom and anchor this into the board on the wall and make it really really strong the issue is that how do you get when this is only four inches apart how do you get a drill in there to do it well i don't know what the right way is but i know what my weight is going to be so uh let's see if it works how's that for confidence [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Applause] well what do you guys think i think it's a huge improvement over the ugly old half a wall that was here before it kind of makes the space feel a little bit bigger it's definitely brighter maybe even a little bit wider considering we lost some thickness on that half a wall so it helped improve the space and i think it's just a good modern update to what we had before and it goes along with the rest of the top floor renovations that we did if you didn't see that video i'll give you a link to that so you can go see all the changes the drastic drastic changes from before and after that went into this the whole floor is now finished with the exception of the bathroom which is going to be coming up anyway i didn't know anything about how to put this thing in other than i checked out codes for height and spacing on different things and other than that i just kind of made it up as i went along i probably could have saved myself a little bit of headache consulting an expert or doing some research but that's never been my style so we got it in it looks great it's nice and strong i can't think of anything else i need to say right now and you're probably trying to get me to shut up so thank you guys for watching i hope you enjoyed it come back next time i don't know what the next project on the list is going to be if i'm being honest i'm finally done with the house projects for a little while so i can get back out in the shop and do something that's a little bit more enjoyable anyway thanks guys we'll see you next time you

Channel: Gunflint Designs

Views: 37,169

Rating: 4.9210525 out of 5

Keywords: stairway guardrail, hardwood floor patching, diy homeowner projects, diy problem solving, oak floor, spindle, balusters installation, newel post installation, newel post, newel post height, staircase guard railing, home improvement, how to install, diy ideas, wood flooring, home improvement ideas, hardwood flooring, how to fix, this old house, home improvement diy, thought process, stairway railing installation, modern railings indoor, remodel, renovation

Id: cfEENrAN53Y

Length: 19min 35sec (1175 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020