How to Fix Your Deck | A to Z

In this video, I'm going to show you the secret to turning a platform that you think you just have to rip up and trash, take it back, and turn it into something beautiful like this. If so, if you are a homeowner and you have a terrace project that you think is not recoverable but you do not have a budget for something new, we will show you the following videos that we gather all the secrets step by step to build a terrace like this now, our system works if it's a new

deck

too, so you know no matter what

your

situation, we've got the answers to

your

questions in the next series, we'll show you how to frame it, how to turn it off. the railing posts how to put the

deck

how to put the railing how to cap it how to trim it how to edging it how to put stairs on it and then all the decorative accessories you are going to want to make your deck look like a million bucks and then we have a video too which will show you how to treat the mallet because this is very important if you want a maintenance free wood surface all you need to know is set so if you are like most people you live in a house that has a pre-existing deck that was built with good intentions but not to the highest level of skill so we're dealing with the deck today that says dead as the plant that was sitting on it not pretty to look at sad thing is the sub structure I can tell by looking at this deck it's still nice and solid, but everything on top is completely rotten, not handled properly, not weather treated and not s e built properly so it could dry out and it's just been rotting where it sits for the last 15 years it's too bad so we're going to take care of it and remove all of this so we can rebuild it and have a beautiful place to hang out again one of the things to be very careful about when you're in this situation is not to get carried away it's very easy to pull out a er mallet and crowbar they smash everything but remember we want to put a new platform back on the same structure so that we're going to have a very labor-intensive process, bye, so we found out real quick here when we pushed the railing. about that they were using the wrong size screws to build the whole thing so let's find out if they put the floor in with the correct screws no ok this wood is an inch and a quarter which means this screw needs to be at least a two and a half inch okay you want it to be one and a half times as long as the material you're putting down and that just doesn't cut it so these are short this is more or less a set screw this is designed so that meet these little ornaments. boards on a small frame if they built the whole deck this way they've actually done us a huge favor because it's going to be a lot easier for my drill to get all these screws out what I want to do oh that's just twist and that's just it's spinning so I don't know if that's in the wood or if I'm rotting underneath or if it's just these screws oh every once in a while they're going to grab Wow we might be in a situation where we'll be able to just Yes, try to get as many as we can.

I think we'll use the crowbar. to get it up because of that situation that means the top of all these joists are going to be compromised so we put our new decking wood in we're actually going to have to go back with a three inch screw so we can get the number compromised in the flesh solid again and that will solve your problem and allow you to save the whole substructure here Wow yeah yeah that was done really well this is a great way to take a look at this wood under here other than a little bit of organic material that builds up which is kind of normal it's actually in pretty good shape and you'll see all these screws that are broken oh yeah yeah there's a lot of people who think that the acq screw which is a deck screw is going to last forever this is a great t reminder that its not if you dont install it correctly and treat your deck the screws will sit and rot and be useless this really amazing to be honest with you when I lifted this I was expecting to see a lot more rot on the surface of this deck.

This is a testament to the good quality of a pressure treated substructure. It was built badly. It retained moisture. Couldn't dry and still won't. t rotted the top of this wood so it can still hold this screw that's awesome for doing a little bracing just to get rid of the bounce and that way we can save this thing you got with summer day so just a quick tip, we're actually going to cut some vapor barrier plastic that goes under this deck. we'll open it up as we go so if we're walking you know something that's not going to be muddy and then when we're done building this little project we'll leave it there and open it up so we have a vapor barrier under our deck to help control much of the soil moisture that will become the biggest enemy you have. when you're building it that low to the ground it's what I call the sauna effect it's because the sun gets hot and it pulls all the moisture out of the ground and pulls it into the wood because it really overheats underneath so if you don't have too much airflow under your nearby porch or your deck when it's close to the ground it's going to rot prematurely so if I lay on a round plastic sheet it's going to hit about 90% of the moisture that's drawn out from under that ground it gives your deck much more time to release that moisture back into the atmosphere so you also get a dry period every night and you won't be wet in the morning when you start over that's where the problem comes if you're wet when the the day begins you're finished you're going to rot that thing in five years if this seems normal to you i'm going to suggest you seek medical attention this is extremely brutal not sure what they were using out here i just oh i don't know I have any idea it's attached to the house which is level the last section here falls over this piece here seems to be pretty consistent with the front edge joist and then the middle one collapses because it's carrying all the weight because of the way it that they built this again this is the cost of trying to frame without wood long enough to get the job done it's just weird to me why they didn't go from that point to that point this is a successful mission we accomplished most of the boards the deck here the way we're doing it we're leaving our wood intact and it's in good condition however it's obvious this was the DIY project there are a lot of structural issues here we're going to have to make a list figure out a plan to restore re all that before we can read ech no surprise just looking at them when we arrived we knew there were going to be some surprises this is not disappointing so as the owner If you open your deck and see something completely shabby like this, you may feel a bit overwhelmed, but the reality is that the basics of the structure are pretty simple and you can make some adjustments to even something as dilapidated as this to bring it back to life. life so in our next video we're going to show you how to restructure your platform but just make the structural changes so you can save it and not have to get involved with ripping it all out and starting again from scratch so we'll talk real quick about structure structural for platforms. outside and there are two types of decks you can build one is where you actually have framing and foundation and it's attached to the house which actually attaches to the building and all the posts that go into the ground are below. or a foundation that goes below a frost line if you have one in your area or is on something solid that won't be in direct contact with dirt so you don't cause your deck to rot and fall prematurely in this situation this owner DIY I built this deck with a combination of both and you'll see this all the time people think it's a really good idea to attach it to the house and then they just drop some 4x4 posts in the ground maybe they'll pack it down a bit . it's all a mess so we've got all kinds of movement in the middle it's almost completely sunk out of sight and I'll just leave this here for you guys to take a quick look at there's an inch gap over four and a half feet here and this already it's the bottom of the deck when i go and put my level this way i'm looking ok i could stick my whole hand under here this is a 5 foot level sorry 6 foot it's an 8 foot deck and you get the idea of ​​how dramatic which is the drop in the middle here we can so look at that corner over there they didn't know how to level it all 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 going down on the brick course here are the most visible and dramatic words now it's ok to build on your concrete step you can use this as framing that's not a problem it's not ok to put an rim joist on it and then use it as your lumber pendant for the next piece of joists this is still attached to two screws in a 2x4 in that corner and a couple of screws to a story post per story that goes down here so that post drops the entire deck it's falling with it and it's created a real mess and you can see everything falling off of course the end here is starting to stick out now the screws are coming loose everything is starting to rot an absolute mess of course nothing is square but what what we can do in this situation is we can come up with a strategy for restoring this frame so we can put a deck surface back on top now the only thing the owner who built this got right is he has his joists on a 16 inch center so we can start with that we're not too concerned about it being out of square because the original deck, while not visibly square to the house, didn't appear to be the square of the sun, so if you want to preserve the structure of your deck, you really want to figure it out. where all the load is and this is what i mean since all the points on this platform are in the middle in this post it carries most of the weight even when you walk around here all the weight is transferred to these themes all over the platform up to this point so every step that's taken is pushing this into the ground so we want to remove it right away because it's less than 8 feet here and it's attached to the house if we can get this Front Ridge stable and sitting on floating blocks so I don't sink any further, then I can put a new wood in and go the whole distance, it's fine using the proper joist hangers.

I'm going to be able to get another 20 or 30 years out of this before it starts to sag any more and even if it does sag it's a really a simple fix to raise the deck and put some shim under it to level it again. I know it's not perfect but let's be real here in the real world when you get a lemon you have to figure out a way to make lemonade so this is what we want. we're going to do today the only thing we're going to change other than that is we're going to lift that rear corner.

I'm going to show you tips and tricks so you can cut, lift, and reinstall and I'm not going to have to take all this apart and throw it in the landfill for myself anymore. I'd rather have a deck that's 90% structurally sound then start over with a new investment all that time all that wasted all that tree in the trash just doesn't make any sense the bottom line is decks go to waste trash sooner or later, what you want to do is figure out a way to build it so that it's strong, safe, and nice for a reasonable period of time based on your investment.

Here we will rise again. We will put some nice railings. We just have to shore this up. It's going to take another 20 or 30 years before it's completely out of use, and I think we can do that. Pay attention. I'm going to show you all my tips and tricks, so before you cut this out and fix it. I just wanted to talk real quick about the backbone technology and the options that are available on the market to help extend the life here. A platform, one of them is a construction tape. the idea is to put on top of the joists and wrap around the sides and you can see when we removed this deck you can see the effect these are the spaces that are between the boards ok now generally speaking that's not water damaged but over here you can see this is where the boa the rds came together well and that's complete crap now if you're building your deck and you're doing herringbone or picture frame and your boxing and adding extra wood and you'll have ends cut like this this was a deck cedar and even cedar is going to rot on you and having all that exposed wet organic material stuck in there all the time that's your enemy so if you're not going to be the type of person to take the time to pressure wash all clean joints every time then use some of this kind of deck protection and it will help stretch the length of your deck.

The other thing we're going to use here are head locking screws. I lovethis technology. These things are awesome because they replace the strength of a 3h Galvanized Lag Bolt and allow me to put structural strength and every piece of wood I'm tying down. I don't rely on nails or screws to have enough shear strength where I am being creative with my repairs and I can carry the full weight of a whole family that is here without any risk to their safety so fasten your seat belts here we go here we go we go Let's see that's already a big improvement just getting rid of that stupid legging 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-fours come out here and stop and they're not attached to this ridge plate. except for probably a few nails it looks like these nails throughout except now I see screws here I just can't be sure of anything well the plan is that this 2x6 needs to be applied correctly on each end so that the if is connected, who's carrying the weight that this 2x6 is transferring right now, there's two deck screws here and there's a couple of nails on the 4x4 post here. I can see what interesting screws in shipping eighty pounds each is lousy pure strength material for deck framing because acq screws will rest over time especially near the front entrance area because people use salt when they have ice on winter and that salt corrodes so we had trouble with a lot of the screws over here ripping out the deck boards so we're going to put a proper joist hanger over here we're also going to get some proper structural screws and then I think what I want to do is trim this so I can keep it two by six and I can tie it up with new joists from here from this post to the house and we'll get rid of all this mess in the middle and then I can use a joist hanger and tie this two by six and at least that's going to straighten out my deck get rid of this arch and once I get this straight and I'll do the same thing I'll take this whole set of d beams off e 2x6 here I don't have a choice I mean probably the only other thing I can do is cut this one back take this hanger off and the n put another joist here and then lift all this in place probably the best thing to do happens to us and that will transfer all my cargo and get rid of this central post, the two together so that the only place I'll have trouble repairing is on the perimeter because I don't want to ever have to crawl under the deck.

I won't ever have access in the future, but if we use the right type of baseboard, we can always have access to the repairs on the stud on the outside, so we'll make a couple of cuts, put in a couple new boards, straighten everything out and then we'll show you how to fix the other top side frame so the irony is in the idea of ​​how it was built the longest timber used here was eight feet long and you can see the edge on the other side of the last beam there's a full piece of wood and that's the only full piece of wood in this entire build except for the 2x4 or the other end, everything else in the middle got cut off, I'm not sure why that was necessary.

I think originally, they probably should have stopped here with the post, they brought in a full beam and attached it at that point and these all could have been full beams if they had taken delivery of the longest. wood all of this would have been avoided so I'll get right into this this joist is 16 inches down the center of its artery in the perfect spot so what I'm going to do is use this as my guide to align with this and I'm going to cut this piece right on that edge so if that's my joke wow that's really cool you gotta love it basically all I'm going to do I'll just mark it with a screw here very quick so now I have my place where I'm going to cut and once I've cut this I'm also going to delete this and this and the post and then I'm going to put a new 2 by 6 with the joist hanger and transfer this load now not we're transferring a lot of cargo in a lot of space I know traditionally we like to double that but let's be honest these covers have been here for 20 years and in this condition they still helped keep people safe and out of the dirt so if we rebuild it similarly with better technology, we'll put it out another 20 years. it's all the weight of sinking this into the ground it's actually under pressure it leaned over and it popped up now the pressures are gone that's awesome okay and likewise this 16 inch line here we're going to want to keep that's good, this 2 by 6 piece so we don't have to replace the whole area of ​​the car.

We're going to cut this one out as well, since it's going to come off anyway. That's not a structural nail. Because it does not surprise me? to the rig all this assembly is on one roof now just unbelievable total incompetence you know there's a time and place to save money when you're building something but when you rely on these fasteners to do all the structural transport it really can't afford to go and whoops don't buy the right nails you're at the store buying a hanger pick up the structural screws they can come in a box to look like that they have the bit in the box it really isn't that hard 10 bucks and save someone from a accident major injury you'll notice someone I'm cutting with this I'm actually rocking it back and forth it's a reciprocating motion it means the blades shoot in and out of the casing but at the end of the day there's a lot of bounce , but most of the saws move by themselves too fast, yes, that should not be possible to do like this.

Now what do we have here? Hey, hey, finishing the nails. t someone building this out of a jar of fasteners whatever they picked up they use is awesome so lots of connections made here there are eight joist hangers thrown intermittently around how many on the other end of the joist hanger there is a piece of wood that is stuck together with the skirting screws or oh god only finish nails why bother putting in the hardware so these boards are actually in the way they are not needed this and here it is where most of the junctions of the original? deck boards were going yeah when it comes apart so easily let me guess we have more of those really awesome screws this is the tip for you if you get a meal and it's all soft and flimsy and you can't hammer it into place to one side, now turn it this way, okay, you can take it out the other side so you get an idea of ​​what I'm talking about. lumber spanning the entire space and i lift it up to the floor joist BAM my entire deck will be flush it's still not level but at this point all the load goes from the wall to the outside edge and then it's just a matter to fix those a few places we're going to be ready to go we're just going to throw a don't know pair of hands there's what I like to call it I'm going to swing this one around and we'll set it up and this is how I'm going to 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 home owner if you have a skill saw you have everything you need to make your frame plus one of these so what I do is I can actually use this as my guard so i'm going to set the depth of my blade and this creates that gap from my board ok so I can run over this yeah I'm ok so what I do is hold this against my wood I hold the SOB board against the triangle and i can run until my blade is exactly where i want it to get it back on track and i run the saw against my triangle that i have pinched into place with my hand that is a technique for cutting a fill your dimensional lumber, you don't have to use the chop saw so you can have the saw with you with your triangle and you can be running around your rig making all your cuts and cutting them on site boom boom boom boom flip them turn and bolt them it will save you a lot of running on the side to another towards a stationary saw like this one. back there slide it into place ok we're just going to get it flush with the front rail test the screw so 2x6 requires one screw for every two inches that's your basic concept each screw is 80lbs of structural strength attached to it. sheer force which is 240 pounds of screw on each end when you're using deck screws now here we're going to finish off using our joist hangers which are crazy straw we're talking a couple thousand pounds of shear force we're going to do the lo same here classic example of a hom The owner we build the deck.

He didn't know what he was doing, but he was close. You know a lot of what was done here was pretty close to perfect with some saveable mods. Remember every time you are disappointed. with something if you throw it all away and start over that's a load of garbage and then the world today throwing things away for the sake of posterity is just i think it's irresponsible so if you don't like what what you got fix it no no we just pull it up and that's almost perfect except this corner is a little low and all of our fronts are a little low so now that we have our structure flat we'll call it and we have one two three four five points where all the wood sits in the dirt and that's what we're going to fix next because we really don't want them to sit in the dirt so all we have to do is cut them off at the bottom and then we'll lift the whole platform. some stone dust and a cinder block, then we can put that in and we're going to 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. from one side to the other for everything that intersects in the middle and this post really doesn't have much of structural importance at this point so I'm just going to drop it so the front can get up at best. raise i have no problem putting a scab on that and just give me a little more strength but obviously i dont think its really significant when a guy wont even get his welcome mat off the step yeah honey when he building the platform not hungry poor man no way no foundation or concrete nothing just dig a hole push it into the ground and let the clay and frost do the rest now the idea here is to lift the platform and level it turn it off when you are building a structure deck you'll think about water removal also this front step has a slope away from the house so any water that makes it past the deck will just go under the ground.

Are you here? That is perfectly fine. The rest of this platform. so there's a gap between each board for the water to get rid of we don't need to maintain any kind of slope here so we're going to try to raise this up to a perfect level here is our temporary support that makes our gap yeah three inches that's pretty intense important to note in our region check your local building code but any structures like this we build in our region that are less than 24 inches have no building code so there are no rules so you can make your whole rig out of popsicle sticks if you want but just so i can sleep at night i like to use a little bit of cleverness some structural fasteners a little bit of science but you know legally but this other homeowner did it there's nothing wrong with it so it was lousy but it wasn't bad because it's not Like a legal outsider I'm throwing some limestone projections in here just so I can level this out and then v I'm going to drop a concrete slab the idea here is that I want to yeah put that block right there perfect people if I'm 1/8th of a degree off grade I'm going to be perfectly happy with that it's structurally sound throw it in our new piece of wood that goes straight from one side to the other and this time I'm going to take a marker to mark my posts where I like the level ok I'm going to approach it from this side as well and take a look over here and see if we're in relatively the same spot which looks good yeah so I'm going to bring it up here now this time I'm going to bring it up to my line and then about an eighth of an inch that way once I'm done laying all my aggregate in here , I will be able to put it back in its place. our screw look at this up to my forever line so with this I'm basically making a splint knowing I put enough screws in this block and that's basically six I have 500lbs of shear in this corner so I would have to put six adults between that wall in this corner and between here and here jumping up and down with all their might simultaneously before we risked hanging high under structural failure, I'm pretty sure we didn'tlet's get done with that kind of scenario ok this is really great to level things up they buy the order of 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 ok push it close and then you can pry it open now they have these tabs here so once it's seated at the bottom of the ¿ you would use that tab and it comes as a little nail prong that holds it in place once it's in place you can come now you don't have to have three hands now these screws are inch and a half which is perfect for this scenario , you're never going to screw into the wood and get your legs which is important to note because you can buy them longer and if you do than by accident some people have been known to pull a screw in their knee sooner when making a hanger of joists each of these little holes has a screw this is designed to hold the bracket to your room or your joists this is designed to keep this piece of material from separating from the bracket so it doesn't fall off the seat that's ok , especially if you're building a deck and using technology like this and you're getting inspections make sure I'm using the right fastener this is a number 10 ok this is really fab for outdoors and it's not a coated screw it's compliant acq but it's not a Kota bolt it's an alloy it's forged it will never rust not like galvanized nails not like hcq bolts they never rust and if you're not using a forged alloy on your Simpson Strong Tie it will fail inspection and, sooner or later one of these days the copper will just crumble and the pressure treating and pressure tree wood is what caused the rust that kills your bolt so the siding ent only protect it for so long that's why when it comes to structure we deal with point loads we deal with brackets we deal with forged bolts those items will never rust and never fail I mean the whole board can take off and rot and it's ok you're not going to fall through your deck there you go so we've basically rebuilt our deck we've taken care of all our point loads we've got our new joists packed up we've got joist hangers. throughout we've put some new head locking screws through the plate in the wall just to tighten things up because it was looking a little soft here on the side you've got a 2x4 carrying our load this really isn't right , but what we're going to do is w We're going to transfer all of our load points on this deck face directly from the frame to the porch using the cedar shimmy technique, so the reality is that our weight-bearing joist package here it's only three and a half feet long so it's not a big concern that we're using a slightly smaller number that's what it is and rebuilding that means tearing everything apart and nobody's in the mood for that these covers they've been here for 20 years now and no one has had an accident, it's kind of funny because here we have this beautiful 2 by 6 area that looks like they use scrap to get the job done.

You've got two of them cut out here and a little scrap in the middle. this on a wall using a 1 foot piece is probably fine but when you do it on the floor you really want to laminate most of the board if not all of it and then here is the key every six inches you want to go from. high to low to high like Big W is all over the board that will give you the strength of a triangle that can't be bent if it's attached that way that's how we do it up down and up okay mmm ten bolts 80lbs each 800 pounds that's not going anywhere anymore so now it's not just flat oh I love you know when you get here you call a person like that you almost see all the options last second they come together and touch that it is absolutely sexy.

I don't think we could have done a good job with new wood this is a bit of an exaggeration the reality is three of these screws will hold the entire deck these replaced the strength of a 3/8 galvanized bolt which means I don't have to drill punch into a bowl, add a washer and nut and then put it all together. I can just drag this in with my impact driver and I'll be structurally sound forever. These things are three to four dollars a screw, but if you ask me I think. it's worth the last step you really want to take care of and this is really simple you're going to have your exterior ridge plate and you want to create a nice level surface on the front top and bottom so there are two advantages to having this piece of wood down here one has a skirt board you can plug it in it will be flush when we put our post up for our railing system.

We don't have to ride on the surface. we can actually cut our post down to come down here so you can attach it here in the middle and with the top rail which creates three points of contact making the entire platform so strong that no one will ever be able to fall through it of the railing I think I did when we started the job ok let's talk decking there's our surface we want a 42 inch deck railing ok and in our layout we would love to have our post a little higher than our actual so we have room for a decorative LED light at the top of this corner and in this corner So to accomplish that task here is a 2 by 4 in the plan it's right below it will be done as a T like this and this part will have the pre-drilled holes for the spindles that come with it. down ok so we have this 2x4 we have this two by four and then a five quart board on top of that even more and that makes the drink life surface area so we want to add all of that together 5 quarts and media okay and then that's our 42 mark of a bum we're going to add two more 44's so we're going to go forty four inches above the surface of the deck here which is an inch and a quarter okay because that's also an inch and a quarter until we get to the frame i have to remember that and then we want to go inside the frame which brings us to forty five and a quarter no we bought eight foot poles ok so an 8 foot pole yeah we cut in half it's 48 which only gives us about a three and a half inch extension we don't go down to the next rail at the bottom it's not the end of the world but I'd like to go back my ally likes to do that where the handrail joins so what we go to do is this we're going to do the math for the middle rail here uniform times four ok to cross this ok so our 44 will come here so 44 or a half inch robe and five and a quarter that takes us to sugar two and three quarters of forty four that's forty one and a quarter okay for that center post and then we'll add the 504 inches on top of that to get into the deck frame and then this will be long enough like to go all the way down so if our main intersection points on the handrail and the corner can really bury that's awesome so we'll cut the first one into forty-one and a quarter and that'll be four here shoe and the balance we'll use here and set it at the right height and hopefully it'll be deep enough here's some work ok so i can throw in a screw that's where i wanted to sit at the height ok and i can find my place alright so without even throwing in a level i n it's just to start with when you're building your frames right before you start to deck make sure you put your framing posts in place and my framing i meant as a railing framing the idea here is that we want to know exactly what we're going to do by how we're cutting our eight foot posts out of wood this one is a little over eight feet long what I do is grab a few miles off my order I like to visualize the gap this is basically the height of that railing plus an inch because you want to keep a gap in there so things stay nice and dry then there's another two by four board and then a five quarter board that leaves us with almost three inches of chunk which is perfect for the LED top usually those lights when they sit about an inch above and that will give the whole thing a clean taut look and then the post more co rta will be brought here somewhere in the middle when we get into that kind of math that is part of the railing design so we can talk about that a little bit later but what we want to do is make a mental note, this will be the height in which our central post will come out of this deck up to this point, okay, that's not higher.

I'm just doing framing but I'm going to show you a little trick here as you build your deck that will help your railings look neat because you want to be very consistent with the gaps so let's what we do is take our two spindle rails and just snap them into place now the idea is it comes one side flush and the other side flush and right away because they are pre-drilled from the factory the spacing from the first axle post is exactly the same and this is where the intersection so I have a four foot section to the right so this is over my Center now visually if that's my Center and I put my four by four post inside that corner of the frame okay I go to this post I'm going to have a quarter inch and here my spindle is going to have to be cut in half that's stupid so what we're going to do is move here to this location where I have from the corner to here about two inches from the corner here to this about two inches which is now my location is perfect and I'm going to measure from the post to the package of my choice it's a little over an inch now I can move everything out of my way now that i have my irony number is to make this perfectly square.

I want to be within an inch of my choice to the beginning of my wood, which is right next to all of my structural screws. Isn't that a lovely surprise? So this is where my post will go and that will be Be nice and firm. What I'm doing here is not relying on screws through the trim plate to hold the post. You'll find these things love to warp over time. he wants to untangle himself that's why they always squirm so when you're putting in a post even if it's overnight it should have a top rail attached to bolt it all down temporarily and make sure he doesn't go crazy because he doesn't come out the tomorrow and it's like a candy cane. this gives me much more support because now when there's pressure or force on the rail up here for hours it's leveraged here and then the bottom inside the platform wants to go that way so I put this block here and I constrain the ability of the bottom of that post to swing into the deck makes the top of the deck 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 at the bottom of this post that goes in, but with that lock there, I don't have to rely on the threading of these screws to hold it in place.

I also have the shear strength of the screws that go into the 2x6 here at three. different points help keep it all together and the reason I've included this setting g you're putting up railing posts and blocks in the framing video is because if you don't put up the rails and you're blocking before you put up the deck the only option you all you have left is to notch and hang them on the side which splits it easy you could use that fancy little post cap and screw it on and screw it on and that's fine and good in some scenarios but this will actually be a railing and there will actually be people going and coming and safety is a concern here because it's going to be two stairs so we want to make sure that all of this is as rigid as humanly possible and that it's all part of the structure so we're going to wrap this up and it's time to start to put the deck up boards up so today is decking day last night we put all our wood on our deck just to store it and leave it on the ground is not a good idea because it's very, very long and so if you put it on your neck it should be level. they'll help keep the board straight and won't twist overnight so we're going to replenish the pile now real quick so we can start laying it down and the idea here is we want to start on finishing the deck don't start in the house folks I always start where your platform ends. allows you to get a perfect measurement for your overhang you can keep in mind what type of skirting system you are going to use and there are a few that will work for you so we will go over those options and then you will want to pull out Get out your jigsaw and cut around your posts do that everything is nice, comfortable and beautiful, and then we will get going.

I am very important to have a straight line when starting. Also, you will always be disappointed when they deliver. There will always be a pair there. you'll just want to throw awaytrash and we'll show you a tip and trick on what to do with the wood once you're done. it involves the handrail and shorter pieces so even the big cradle and workpieces will come in handy later on so we have to sort your lumber but for now let's move you will be moving a couple boards at a time and that it will help us solve the really bad thing right away.

My system for setting up your five quarter deck boards is as follows: Take your load and start laying it down and you'll quickly identify boards that have bad warping. I call it the hockey stick collection and they're all over here, it's okay now when you take a look. in what I'm doing here you can quickly see I have probably three or four boards in there that I can use there's only half the length that's really simple I have handrail sections here that I can use of that wood like well no I want to be installing that into the deck, especially early part because I don't like fighting those boards if I don't have to if I have to force a couple of them in which we'll probably list here.

I can say I probably have two or three that I'll have to force so that's fine but I want to identify the straightest wood I have just by putting them together and when you lay it all out most of these boards that are here now are in pretty good shape at as for them being straight, that's where we need to start now, once we're straight, we also want to take a look at the crown that crowns a deck board. it can be really awkward, especially when they are 16 feet long. Oh rule number one when working with this stuff whenever you see a decal get rid of it, nothing worse than ending up and seeing decals sticking out of your deck anyway. we're going to see all the wood has a green to it alright so what you want is to take a look at the green it's like a bowl in a lot of cases and that bowl is going to start out like that and it will roll all over time so what you want to do is have a crown, which is the top of th rainbow up so it sits like this, while it dries it will try to dry out the ends that are already screwed in place so the board lays flat if you leave it on the other side it will be struggling and drying out and trying to pry up the screws you risk these things loosening over time and you get this cupped effect which is not very nice to receive so crown now we take a look at this wood a shape pretty decent, just going to do a Visual Inspection I'm looking for chunks that don't have any rough surfaces Knots that have come loose and fallen off But I think the board is in good shape so here we are.

I'm happy with that one. a little bit of rubbing it's just dirt and that will come off eventually we give it a quick light grit and now I'm also looking at my second best board and that will go on the nose so it also has to be perfectly straight also we want to see what kind of condition is the board is in and we're good and if your board is longer than your deck and you're going to make cuts this has a split yeah so there's a split on this board here so what I'm going to do. what I do is I'm going to take this plate, I'm going to rotate it, so I'm going to install the split on the cutting side, not my installation side, and that will help make sure that you don't see a big gap next year. coming on will get wet and stay wet and promote early rot so we want to eliminate that problem before we start and the crown is on the right track get rid of my decal now let's get this over with now this is the advantage of getting longer boards than you're going to use now there's a lot of people who have the misconception that cedar only comes in 16 foot lengths that's not true I can get it up to 20 feet we have a couple locations in town that have great value with the mills and they gave me 20 foot cedar boards so I can make an 18 19 foot deck and still just install all my partitions and cut them when I'm done and that's worth its weight in gold because at the end of the day the last thing you want do is co nbuild their deck with joints in the joists so that's why we're replacing this deck the one here was cedar and they did it because they had short lumber and that caused early rot it was a disaster so we're going to avoid that at all costs because when we're installing it has a bad split and it's already cupping so it's upside down and inside out now the reason i'd like to take my extra time here is the process to install it is just bolt it on so once i start with my screws i don't like to stop and inspect and flip and turn that's the wrong time to do it because there are usually other people helping you put all the screws in. a decision you have to make for yourself i'm bleeding imagine this board right in this position is capped is capped the way we want that's the most ideal situation sadly it also comes with some serious edge damage here in two points, probably from some kid in the store where the forklift didn't.

What the hell is he doing? No big deal ok yes it's topped the wrong way but I'd rather it be topped the wrong way than show some nasty ugly place and because we ordered this on a delivery. I don't have a whole lot of options I have to use this board because it's very straight I think it's worth putting it the wrong way reminding myself of this I'm going to pull the board off the wall so now I know this is the crown the wrong way ok and when I'm installing this I'm going to use a little bit of construction adhesive on the joist just to help make sure it doesn't fit the Buckley so before we go into December we want to make sure we have our vision for our skirt in place place and that's the area we're closing off below deck we need to make sure there are no animals crawling under it we don't want any skunks to make a home here because that would really ruin the atmosphere so let's talk about the options so you have the ability to make your decision how you want to make your own first with your first board in place you have to measure up to the wall and find out what kind of chip you will have left in the house, We'll be about half a board, which is perfect, so I'm not going to worry about the math because I'm moving this around to make my skirt anyway.

I'll be fine if you end up with just one tiny little piece. You might consider making some of your gaps a little bigger so you end up with a full board but that's another story here we go my first board against all my posts I have a three and a half piece of 4x4 plus the one and a half that it's five inches these are five quarters by six it actually ends up being about five and an eighth five and a quarter boom there Let's see how flush that is not terrible that leaves a nice gap in the back so that if I end up flat like this, no, that's easy, but how do you end up the platform?

If I put any material here, it will be in the front. of the board so if you use a deck board as a frame around your entire deck like this you'll still have enough material down here you could put in a lattice or you could put in a skirt board because the skirt board is like a board close up and it's only 5/8 well this is an inch and a quarter so you'll have a nice gap and look very clean and you can put a vertical skirting under it. The other option you have, of course, is to create a nose at the beginning of the deck.

Now since this is going to be a stair I know it takes a bit more work but if you were to do the math and set yourself up with a nice stair nose and then a skirt board then you have something to attach your steps to. everything looks neat and small and then the end result is this nose is the same as t the stair so to set it up we want to measure this out about an inch and a quarter so that after our five eighths we still have a five eighths overhang . I like a 5/8 overhang because two of these boards on a traditional riser that you can buy in the store as pre-made is the same depth as the stair plus 5/8 is fine so if you start with 5/8 after After your dash is on, you'll end up with the same nose size on each step and that's a nice way to wrap it up, it doesn't take a lot of math, so 5/8 plus 5/8 inch and 1/4, so we'll just take our tape and measure an inch back the room there okay and then I'm going to measure from here to my deck board that's up against all my posts okay and I have a one inch gap okay now I don't want to remove an inch of material because I still need a gap, but when I'm done I want to remove 7/8.

I want to leave 1/8 for the expansion contraction, so as long as my joints are consistent, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to say, here we go. I have my system in place. I have to make a 7/8 notch around each of these posts and that's a very simple way to do this so what I'm going to do is I I'm going to place my giant triangle here against my platform. Now check this out because these corners are nicely rounded and the system here with a rounded platform is actually quite dangerous. If you flip it this way, you will make contact with the solid side. and you'll actually make the mark in the right place, okay, here we go.

I always go back and swipe to your post and when you're cutting, cut the pencil so it disappears and you know you're making the right move. Don't worry about making the pencil mark too long. It won't matter. Aren't we bringing back the old framework so that each of these deck post locations is a little different? so second in fourth winner contacting the wood this one and the other one not so there's a little bit of movement so if we cut them all exactly the same we'll end up with gaps so here instead of 7/8 I'm going to remove an additional eight boom it's going to 3/4 on this 7/8 where I'm making contact it's probably the most important measurement in the whole build once I finish this one everything else should just go nice and smooth because we've arranged our wood to be straight and we've got a finish worked out so this board is the first one you put behind your post once you have that's like your template all you have to do is make sure everything is constantly spaced after you're home free so we're just going to take our puzzle here now and we're going to line up our blades so we're really eating the pencil now I want my blade just for the pencil side on the outside so I'm actually cutting the hole 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 these gaps if I squeeze them really tight now we'll have a good bit more space late so I don't want to leave too much room here's the trick for you when you're cutting a curve like this with the jigsaw you just want to hold at an angle this way to grab the wood on the bottom or the blade will tend to bend it nice and you'll end up with the top being right on the line, but the bottom sticking out and not fitting into the hole, so just a quick visual inspection here.

I saw just one spot here where I didn't dig deep enough so I'm just going to grab my exacto knife I'm going to clean my edge just a note the jigsaws don't have a rest on them make sure the blade stops moving before you sit down and always lay it on its side oh that's a lesson you learn the hard way so what i'm doing now is lay this board in place so it doesn't move and use this screw just to mark the middle of m and rafters or my rafters, I'm sorry, so after I get all my deck boards in place, it's a lot easier for me to know exactly where I'm going. a little below the surface don't leave it out it will look like scrap what happens is the wood will end up swelling over time and slowly close that hole will be perfect so if you've seen our previous decking videos you've seen I'm in love with the camo system and it's the kind of system that has its own handle and feeds screws at an angle just below the rounded part on the edge at a 45 degree angle and holds it that way it keeps the whole surface screw free and that love it but here because we were saving the old frame we weren't sure about the condition of the wood and admittedly the top of the wood in many places has experienced a bit of rot and as a result not I want to have to rely on the camo screw to hold down softwood and keep my boa rds from warping, so we go with surfer screws on this one just because it's not new wood, that's really the thinking behind it so we always go with 3 inches when ordering the material we were taking into account that the wood on the surface may not be up to scratch and using 3 inches just solves all that concern .

Now it is also the cedar screw, the brown one. Here's a note for you. There are two kinds of colors of screws in the market where we are: green and brown andGenerally speaking, pressure-treated lumber came and went green until recently, now they have a brown pressure-treated lumber, they still have a green pressure-treated lumber and this is what I'm going to suggest. I don't care what color wood I buy. the brown screw is ok if you buy green wood use the brown screw it will look stupid for the first year but for the next 39 years of the decking life it will be the same color as pressure treated wood once it the sun has a chance to get it for a while whereas if you use the green screw it will look great for the first year and it will look stupid for the next 39 years. if there is a knot in the wood an inch from the edge don't put a screw in there ok find another place to put that screw you have to get out of the rings of that knot ok if that knot was here it would be putting my first screw in here because i'm not going to screw through a knot it's guaranteed to fall apart and blow you up and if you have to say you have a knot right where you want to put the screw what you do is mimic the screw camouflage system drilling back under the bend until you set the angle you want and then you can drive this screw in and you can throw a screw that way and that's a great way to get a screw to hold the edge even if you have a knot here we go, you will see that it pulls nice and tight now we are going to use the saw later to cut the edge so it is better to screw all the edges first because that will save you a lot of time and you will not have to screw it afterwards and cut I was at risk of splitting the wood so when I started to put that screw in I could feel the resistance of the knot and it was much further away than was visible there so the knots probably went through the wood at an angle so what I did was back off and burned it back by pushing down through the wood once I was done. i cleared the knot and then drove it in this board is not perfectly straight we know because we took the time to map it all out and what i grabbed here is a board that is not straight to demonstrate how to install it now here is the secret when you have a board which is tight on both ends and the big gap is in the middle of it what I've seen a lot of guys do is grab the board like this and the poet oh that's perfect put a screw in but what's not perfect is that the ends are still touching wood to wood and it's really hard to screw the 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 it's not the crown so we flip the board over the crown upside down and we don't want to do that we don't have to so take the time pick up the bad boy and flip him that way try not to destroy them now that the board is flipped. start to tighten this you can see I can get a nice tight here and then it opens wide on your end it's a lot easier to manipulate the end as you go because our gap is now perfect here and put my square which is going to be the gap i'm using i'm going to use my tool to set my gap to the whole project ok and of course i'm near the end so i'm going to burn the screw so since we're going to put a lot of pressure on the boards, we're going to start screwing in the ends, so what do you want to do? you start screwing into the wood put it in reverse and push down as you back up did you get some smoke and push it down and it will never split?

Don't ask me to explain the science behind it. I don't know, I just know that it works. I learned that trick of all things from an electrician carpenter who taught him. It's always nice when guys share their tips and tricks. you know what divides 99 times by 99 the fact that i just hit four in a row means i can do miracles this is the point where we can put some pressure on this wood and pull it forward ok the secret It's if you close the gap too fast and too aggressive in the beginning, all the woods will be in contact with each other, but you should be able to close it a little each board until you get to the end.

That's one way to straighten the table. There is another way. demo purpose we'll take another hockey stick oh that's a beauty there's a nice gap down there but halfway it's gone good so lemme put some screws in this straighten it out and i'll come down and show you my other secret hit the crazy part here there's the forest coming and coming back and then it bends it really really fun so what i need to do is get this wide enough now to tuck this in here what's that where i want it? Wow you deal with every joist so let's say for example you're not in the biggest trouble 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 needs help to close the boards here is a great trick our gap is only half an inch not that dramatic is it?

But you want to put that square in there because I have two points of contact between my wood and that's why it works so well and we're going to put this here perpendicular but we're going to throw a little degree on it a little bit of an angle okay so now my strength on the board is at the bottom of the wood when i drive it and it's as simple as putting that screw in the frame there we go and use it as a fulcrum so i put my screw in here I'll put my screw here.

That is what has placed my screw here. Now, ladies, this is amazing stuff. voila there's a one person operation and you can just lean in with your hand you can stick your shoulder into it okay and you close that gap until you're absolutely in love with it tighten the screw don't let go of the pressure until you're all through ok and then you loosen it up and hopefully the surface of your deck won't be so damaged and this will be a little snug but it will come up and you'll find that when you do this this screw digs into the wood and when you go to remove it's most it will probably come out like this you don't want to leave this lying around put that screw right there in the wood and just push forward and it will come out that way no one steps on a screw and you can use the board over and over and over and over again like this which remember the secret here is the only bend you want to fix is ​​when it's opening at the end if you flip it over and it creates a rainbow in front of you you have the board upside down flip the board over because that's the easiest way to manipulate the MA Dera trying to close up the middle is always a real frustration and you'll never get the ends spaced correctly this way you're guaranteed to have constant spacing and you just need to have a little extra three foot piece of wood lying around to help you out. do it so do it yourself but it's a lot faster if you're a lot faster it's a trick you can do yourself but it's a lot of fun if you have someone to help you with it. makes a deck job very fast even if your wood is lousy so one last quick tip before I let you go and let's jump onto this platform here when you are screwing your wood with a lousy piece of what is place your tip where you want it and then put your hand on the back here drill put a good down pressure and I'll tell you why right there that's perfect you have a lot of control if you go one handed and your drill ever slips It slides off that screw because you're pushing down so hard with one hand that it's going to jump out and gouge a big hole in your wood like that.

You don't want that on your nice platform, so instead of pushing really hard with one hand, you can just go and hold it. the contact between the bit and the screw with your left hand and then you don't have to push as hard and evan if you slip you can recover just fine that's a great tip for beginners just to make sure you're not going to be drilling a ton of holes in wood, you'd be surprised how many times it just slips off that screw. coated so sometimes the head padding fills up with the coating and it's not so silly to think until you start putting a lot of pressure on it and then disaster strikes we're left with our last two deck boards to continue here and of course the last one is written on all your special detail cuts and we have an angle we want to put under the window trim there so you'll find that when you cut your piece and think you're ready to go it's just not is there any way to fit that in there so that's why a second of the last board you don't screw down now you can use this technique when you're doing flooring of all kinds also cut the board and lay it down so you can have something to measure from but then go back and install the other piece first and you can't go back and install this one because this is a lot are you going to slide on boom? no, it's the problem to screw them come on job done i don't have one more trick for you max remember we separate all our boards are good and bad so these are the bad and the ugly and we are going to start throwing a screw here.

I'm going to show you a technique now, you don't want to rely on this, but it's effective and that's where it gets you. screw it in at a significant angle let's start off right take your pry bar and before you screw it in lift it up and then measure what you're doing here get about 1/4 of that screw through the hole on the bottom until it's in contact with the way that now the screws at an angle contact that wood with a gap and we all know that when we tighten this it will close the wood, ready to screw in magically ok just to recap because we put our studs inside our frame our frame is one and a half inches so this includes this plus i want a one inch overhang which is current at five quarter board thickness its amazing how nothing has the same dimensions as what it says on the package you know we are going like this and i've lined it up there too nothing is really as straight as it should be around here but i think at the end of the day when we're done it'll look really nice and no one will know if there's a little going back and forth with the skirt overhang so i'm just using the ok to hacksaw this is actually a hack this is my pvc plumbing saw but it's very handy with software wood this is annoying so it pretty much covers everything you need to know for tips and tricks for putting up deck boards remember space is important but the most important thing is to be patient and be 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, that's okay, now it's time to move on to the railings and stairs, that's okay, it's railing day.

I'm so excited because Yeah I have about two hours to finish this job before I get flooded by a coming storm so let's get going we're going to install a horizontal rail kit if you've never seen it before it's very , Very simple. we're going to 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 going to have this top plate that we install it on and leave a gap on the bottom that way everything it stays nice and dry and then we're going to finish this whole thing off with a decorative drink shelf we're going to put a five-quart by six-inch board on top and that way we have a surface on top that we can screw down from the bottom of everything It needs to be clean and shiny and we can sand and polish it and have some beautiful years to come we're going to finish this whole system up to the stairs and down there are two steps to the normal landing and we're going to do it very gradually because we need to bring visitors into the house which is nice to consider the fact that grandma is only five feet tall and can't climb the steps like she used to, so instead of going with a nine and a half inch ladder we're going to go with three steps here with a six inch rise and that'll be simple to build we'll just use a two by six and make a couple of boxes tied together some that won't slip off and voila we'll have a finished project let's look at the really simple process to install these and it's really simple so you need to know a couple of things before you start so you don't screw it up.

One thing we're going to know is this core post here. This is the anchor. my top rail is measured and installed all ready to receive the rail kit so i have exactly 49 oh we'll call it medium but that's ok the middle side from base to base and if this is plumb and that's 49 and a half and I cut my top rail 49 and a half so it doesn't matter what happens here when I screw a All this together is going to be the basic law of math so let's double check this 49 and three eighths we'll call it now , this kit is going to surprise you because it has end caps and these you install on the top and bottom end of the rail and then you put it in place and then they have these little places here that you can use to screw them into the wood so you're not screwing into through the end of the wood you are screwing through the folds and that will keep your rail from splitting and rotting over time and they are a bitdecorative they're going to match the tops that go here and that's great so what you have to do take the two plates together measure the thickness of both plates and it turns out to be half an inch so I have to take that off my measurement remember that we were 49 and three eighths minus half I have 48 and 7/8 okay yes so we are going to cut two pieces 40 and 7/8 we are going to do the same process all the way around the platform, measure from the base of the base and then cut two for each section and then we'll assemble everything and then glue them in place and mount it with the screws it's that simple not a lot of brain work involved here just make sure you're measuring the base and that's the number with the one that goes no matter what and everything else will fit and close square and chubby I'm going to have very consistent spacing on both ends and if you want to know how set up your post so that you have constant spacing on both ends and you're not seeing all the series.

Look at the first section on framing because we figured out how to get those posts into your frame in that section just to show you that we got it right. let's pretend this is all screwed up and see if it fits perfectly in the old spot loving it now this particular rail will be about this tall but before we install anything i'm going to connect all the spindles on the top and bottom screw them all together together and then we'll push them in and they're really giving us a lot of screws here this is like a two inch screw.

I'm only putting in quarter inch material so it's a bit ridiculous, yes, but there's really no way it's going to come off no matter how old this rail is. I guess by now some of you may have seen my son Nate do quite a bit. video about this kind of process not too long ago last year at some point right and I think he was a lot better than me yesterday. Watch that video because it's frustrating. One of the benefits of this system is that they can go out and buy this piece of wood with all the holes pre-drilled and already set to match the gap code. can't let the kids fall through the gap so now it's very handy if you want to be one of those people you want to be someone who makes your own size of space and drills your holes go ahead but for my money i like to buy something that is already pre-drilled. cedar and it will be pounded to repair the reins if you hit 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 a foot attached here yeah which is nice oh yeah nice and simple because we already pre-measured knowing the height of this and just looking for a little space under here so we'll be able to try that after the rain so now the height of this bracket attached that's the perfect job of setting that up , it's almost too stupidly lucky I mean now these screws come in at an angle and you want about a half inch gap from the front so pull a little more maybe 3/8 because I know when you tighten it it'll pull just fine , the idea Here you have two screws in the back because that's where you want most of your force.

You are keeping it from falling. This is the best part of the job. Okay, now look at this. I'm going to hug him tight. yeah we're going to rock out so at this point we're going to finish putting in all the structural screws and then we're going to tie a couple screws from the top to this section to get rid of this gap here so you don't. have an air gap here nothing worse when you're sitting and looking over your railing and you see space between your railings so we'll get it nice and tight and then we can reduce our five quarters on top and bolt it in from the bottom this is a perfect ledge for drinking the perfect height to stand there and relax and hang out with your friends so now we're at that point where it's time to separate the men from the boys the finishing touches now bear with me here because the railings are our finishing touches this is where the details come in, everything else is basic carpentry, measure, cut and screw, but when you get into the finishing touches on the railings, the things your hands come in contact with, everything it's got to be perfect your sight lines little things like this so i've cut out this top plate that we talked about this is the five quarter board because on top of the rail the idea is split the difference in space that ends up being barely an inch on each side. the post in the corner is okay what you do here is you actually want to smooth this edge this edge is really sharp it's not very attractive so what we're going to do is we're going to go down to the chop saw and we're going to cut some corners take our palm sander smooth all that out and then we'll go up and screw this in place now because of the way your saw may or may not work if it's a slider it's easy you can cut in any direction you want but because the board is so width I've actu ally got a cut on the inside so I'm going to flip my board over which means I'll have a rough edge on both sides of the board but it doesn't matter like I said we're going to palm sand everything . of this first before we put it on we're going to take our palm sander.

I'm using a 220 grit sander just because cedar is a soft wood and doesn't take a lot of power and you can burn straight through the whole board so I have the speed I'll turn it down to half speed just to get a chance from getting used to how fast it's going to work at these different levels of affecting this depending on how dry the cedar is so sometimes you just have to learn by trial and error you can see I can also get rid of any dirt that comes along from the back just smoothing out the edges keep in mind since we're going to be using our hands on these we really want to make sure no one gets hurt we just want to work until all those marks are gone but be careful not to sand in excess, that's why I have the low speed and a nice smooth grain.

If you oversand this after it gets wet in the next storm, you'll get all Carini on and you won't be too happy with the result. you can see the grooves here ok you have these lines and then a gap each of these is a different material ok so the lines are actually a much denser and tougher material so when you are sanding it will sand that. soft spot and because it's because of the different densities you're actually causing a bit of a scoop you don't even see it when it rains everything swells up nice so when you buy this straight from the store because it's wet cut out all those in between points that they are already raised and when they dry they will shrink on you so you may even deem it necessary a month from now right before you go to put the clear coat finish back on with the palm sand and give it one more chance to get rid of the ridges so this handrail is nice but this one now that's sexy when you're about to put this on remember i was talking about holding it from the bottom if i go straight in i'm going to come out the top fine even if i put it at an angle like look at how aggressive my angle has to be and when you start putting things at an angle like that, weird things happen to the wood, it starts to get pulled and it has a tendency to want to fasten and you can do it if you have to but I would suggest spending the extra few bucks pick up a shorter screw something like 2 inch because this even if I put that screw in straight from the bottom ok I'm getting enough I'm going to be very happy with it, so what?

What I'm going to do is sync it up a bit more and I know I'll 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. by hand screw in a bit at an angle because as you get closer to the top the size of the drill will come into contact. Being in contact with the railing will restrict your ability to screw in that screw you can take the head off and then it's a big mess and that's buried, so the last part of the railing system is when it's in one of these tight corners. against a brick wall it could be brick or vinyl or whatever but what I would suggest is instead of going with a four by four post and then put another big four by four post here and then have some little ones and stupid gap go this way you'll see this on houses all the time with railings you'll see this on century houses anytime they have a porch they always take one of their finished boards and put this assembly on, put it in place and then put it back they attach this to the building because we're going to 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's really not just for pretty it's for safety so if you're going down the stairs and you erase and grab you like that on the railing you know how i am i weigh 200lbs i put 200lbs of pressure on that railing he has to hold me up so i dont cum if you dont join the house.

I'm really missing the force multiplication effect of that triangle so what we want to do and if I see this one more time I'm going to lose my mind. I see all the time people make a hole in the mortar joint to put their screws in now that's basically sand and if you put something in the mortar joint with sand and every time someone grabs a railing and it shakes a bit it starts to clean up all the sand before you know where you put it a big hole between the bricks nothing contains anything and you've lost all your strength you want to drill right into the brick the best idea is to drill the brick behind here so your hole is covered in visibility from the outside and that's all you have to do now if you don't have a hammer drill it's ok i don't have ham mer drill this time i'm going to use a regular drill to demonstrate just a VSR drill you get the tapcon screw kit from your local construction store and you get the one with the bit so you always have the bit that is the right size you won't be disappointed now without the hammer drill feature it just takes a little bit or more time but still very effective ok you will see how long that hole is traditionally when the bit comes with the screw the amount of meat in 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 drive that part of my drill into the wood like I did, I know when I put the screw in. i have room to set the depth of the screw so this is going to be great we just put our screw in here hey pup don't feel like you hear that torque going nowhere and if you really want you can take sometime get some plastic would fill that hole and then sand it all down again later and make it invisible now i know someone you're going to sink you're going to be thinking oh we should drill all the way until we make contact with the wall behind the brick but keep this in mind the brick is four inches deep then there is an inch of space plus an inch of wood so now you are dealing with six inches and then you have probably a half inch piece of wood OSB if you go all the way to the end on that OSB that's not going to be stronger especially since what we're looking for is the strength of this vertical movement here no one will be able to rip that off the wall that's not the concern because our another 4x4 post is right on the frame if this is surface mount maybe that's a concern and you might want to open up the wall from the other side and lock it in and put an 8 inch screw in there but omg that's a lot of work to avoid having any throat studs in the frame very important when it's time to do and our baseboard knows what guy it wants to go with here we're going to go with a more solid skirting we're looking at animal control because we don't have direct sun on this area we are not as concerned with air passing through if it gets direct sun i would suggest going with a privacy lattice so you have a bit of control of large animals and wind but since we don't need that here we are going to look for one nice clean look and what to do two recommendations up front many times when you buy this type of skirt board the end boards are angled not cut square from factory and I don't know why so when you go to measure and cut for your skirt always make sure you trim your first edge before you start and then you should be fine now if you remember the demo video of demolition the beginning the wood that was on this platform was cedar like we're using now but it was buried in the dirt so I'm very important to you you don't want your cedar in the organics so when you're measuring leave an air gap and when you finish this if you want to finish the garden and you don't want to have an air gap go and get some light stone pebbles or river rock and use it to build behind your gardens against your deck if you want to close that animal trap never push your dirt against this again that it will promote and then it will simply shorten the life of the lampsyour platform that works they have a good space under here i can put my hand under the other thing you want to think about is decoratively speaking you don't want them to meet so you want one to cover the other and i always suggest the place you want to be the most pretty is the one you want to put at the end so this is our street view so we'll put it at the end we're going to start here with this one just line things up make sure you're happy with the way it ends up put knee in t here for a little bit of pressure take a couple screws and put this board in if possible two inches from the edge is a really good place to go it will help promote not splitting and this whole row of boards you want to have the at the same height from the top, so if you need to, you can mark it, but I like to have a constant line.

I'll go across and just look at each other now the same rule applies on the bottom board take a look at the entire length of your board skirt that you are attaching to it should be a bit level take the highest reference about a half inch down from that nice and easy here again driving this screw flush with the wood you don't want to bury ok this is a screw you'll want to be able to pull out if you ever need to access under the deck so if you bury it , it will swell up a bit and then when you try to get it out you will destroy it's wood so this is a great way to start and then it will be fine to access under the platform if it ever wants to get in there for whatever reason why we start at the outside corner with a full board is so it's quite pretty it's important which brings me to the next point when you cut your board you will have a clean side of your saw blade and you will have a rough side install clean side out we are looking for that two inch down consistency so just the final finishing touches here start at your corner measure towards the center and try to fit the flooring to be consistent so the boards have the same height you don't want to have to cut every raise and lower board just take a shovel and clear out a channel set it steady when you get close to the middle stop start at the other end with a full board and go back to 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 boar d to fit in that hole which is so nasty what you do is take the full amount of width of all these two boards plus the space split it by three and then cut three boards the same width it's still three o'clock here and that will make the gap only take probably 3/4 inch off this board this port on this board and lue go won't even notice that the plates are a different size and won't get stuck with a little splinter one end and don't forget to finish the whole skirt before you start building the stairs one because it's so hard to work behind the ladder and two if you hike your skirt up to this area to where the stairs are you have to close the side of the stairs straight to the ground or you lose the ability to hold your creatures so finish the whole skirt and then it will be time to look like this Now it's time for the stairs and you have a couple of options. out there whenever it comes to black metal it's for your finish work you can always go to the builder's store and they will have pre-made black metal stair risers for you and just screw the decking boards in from below in that's a doable system but only if you have the same kind of height requirements as a traditional 8 inch riser step so if it's a little different you have to do something custom then that's not going to be good for you you can always buy the wooden ones that come pre-made too and you can shave the top and bottom off a bit, but remember the code in most places and what people are used to is that each step has the same height, rise and run length, so if you start doing modifications like that, you get up with really long and weird shaped steps and the natural function of people going up and down the stairs changes abruptly. e so you can be walking down the stairs deep in conversation not paying attention and almost everything on you just because the heights are wrong so what you want to do is make sure each step is exactly the same more or less one quarter inch on exterior applications.

I would even give or take a half inch just to keep life simple ok now our total height including the deck itself is around eighteen and a half ok so let's make our stairs based on eighteen as our measurement just because there are a lot of irregularities here and we have the ability to shim a little bit to get the height we want so 18 divided by three is six I hope so and cut into my calculations above so we want a six inch rise now a two times six is ​​five and a half inches and the deck board is one that gives me six and a half and that's 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 that I've pre-cut here and then I put planks on top of it I end up with a height of six and a half inches by two okay that's thirteen and out of eight that's another six and a half under the step which will actually end up being perfect it's lucky we got it that way and one of the reasons it is that way is because the house had the original stairs built in there for two steps and that was set up to be similar to going up and down run and so what we've done building a level deck extends that same math to a different part of the driveway and since the ground is pretty level we end up with a similar result so if you have a situation in your house where you have two perfectly good steps go up to your house and you want to add a deck finish your deck at the same height as your last step is and you'll be fine too now i'm thinking about the street when you look at my staircase because i'm making all of this cedar stuff, i'm not going to finish it with any other surface table than the top so what i did is create a little bit of blocking i'm just going to trace this so it makes some sense and ok we can visualize this together and the back actually sits inside the outer two ok so the only time you can see the joint is from the side of the building not the front and you just see a joint and closed that side basically what's going to happen after that is we're going to put a five quarter inch board 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 , start to see what's going on here okay, and I also have the little blocks here for that box, so I'm going to build both boxes independently, we'll go down the first level, we'll drop the second box, we'll put a couple of screws in the skirt to hold it all together and then we'll finish it all together, give it a quick sandpaper and be done with it. being able to take our last post, put it inside the frame to the ground and attach it from the three frame pieces plus the handrail and that will really make these stairs part of the deck and support the top rails here with that triangle effect that we're looking remember when you are building something outside just look at the end from the beginning, take some time to draw it, think about it and you will be fine;

It's not that building difficult box stairs is the easiest way to do it, it also requires a bit more material, so if you wanted to cut stringers, we had a video in our video series on our latest tech project to show you how, but This is quick and simple, the math is easy and it's one of my favorite ways to put a quick set of stairs together so I try to keep the owners in mind when I'm designing these things and making videos. I try to use the same type of building materials and tools that you will have access to.

There are faster ways to build air tools for framing 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 with how often in your life are you going to frame a deck now when you're putting your box up before you finish your frame and put in whatever post you want just to make sure you dial your level right so before we start we've got a working framework behind we've attached our skirt so we're using three inch screws to tie down we're going to drop five or six in there just for a security make sure we have at least four or 500 pounds of this shear strength on those screws and then we're going to remove this level and we also want to make sure we're not just level left to right 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 much more comfortable if you're going up the stairs if you're leaning a little more forward because that's the direction you're going the back is too high , you're unlevel you feel thrown down the stairs and it's dangerous so it's always best to only have a 1 degree slope to the building that is my ATS lathe my level line ok now what I'm looking for is square like this that I put my level in these two publications.

There's no way it's in contact with the entire side of the post on both posts unless it's relatively square and that position is really perfect again very nice and because it's all closed off even if it's off a little bit no will matter. i just want to make sure when i put my rail in all my woods it will line up and not open or in case i have a turn my box remember if it dries up a little crooked while building placing your stairs a little out of square may help you figure it out the problem with making your sugar your wood on your railings its nice and tight the post is already set in the base we know its really good put a screw in the bottom corner now what i want to do is use my line of sight and align this publication with the other to plumb.

I don't want to trust anything but my eyes here because this post will be judged by that post. and if that one comes out a bit after all What we've done here if this one comes out by the same amount it'll show you why I'm doing this for the same reason we did in the deck with our post so now I don't trust the screws if someone is. pulling the rail like this, I actually have a lock on it, so I'm multiplying the number of contact points the screws have and making it very, very difficult for that wood to separate.

I dare say you won't find anyone who can. to just walk around and rip this thing apart you're going to need some serious tools so now this post is built into the frame the frame is attached to the deck frame and that's actually very solid when you put the handrail in there. be an invincible testimonial to the guy who originally put these papers up not very often you'll see this but i fixed my gaze 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 bolted them together look at that folks if you start the level you build the level so once I've cut my trace piece I'll bring it over here line up my holes and look at it carefully just for posterity and bring that mark no this is my butt sticking out of the railing. okay I'm going to line it up like this and I'm going to extend that tracking line and you can see that it's actually going to make some sense so that's where it goes okay you'll see how my line is perpendicular if it was an elevator. that's directly in the air that hole will be directly above that hole the spacing stays constant now that makes a little more sense there so we'll cut it at the same angle yeah yeah i think we have something we're talking about now we have our box instead of my second box and I'm just covering it with a five quarter board just a thought here real quick the frame on the second box isn't lining up in the same spot as the first box so when I'm putting my screws all my screws will go all the way up, just a thought because people see the scre w heads so it should be considered as part of the design element or it will be very noticeable and of course as with any soft wood, when you get up close to the edges the boards don't close well so we just lift this end up and then start screwing in at an angle and now it's contacting the wood with a gap and watch it close rrar there we go so i made all my box the same size i cut all my floor boards first i'm aligning so when i'm building this and i have to cut my way.

I have to do a little puzzle where I can fit my 2x4 here and make sure all my boards are level before my Martha is right. We just have this here. What we are going to do now is demonstrate a simple railing system that isattractive and easygoing, which is important, it's also incredibly strong, so what we have are our four-by-four posts. I remember our rule of thumb, as long as we install things really solid on the base and relatively plumb that we can handle. the caps to close so we always cut the bottom at the top of our rails are the same even on the stairs don't get in the habit of trying to trace the top rail and cut it separately just cut the bottom reverse the board follow the line treat it like this so we do the same thing we drop it in we trace it got my measurement now i'm going to sniff and sniff to get my measurement ok because that's a great angle to work with it's easy to work with and then i'm removing that half inch for the depth of our tops ok now i have that board and you can see my pieces are different.

I've lined up the holes. I make them roll. I draw the bottom line on the top floor and then cut it. Now I have my bottom up you can double check they're set there they should be pretty straight if they're not don't worry we still have that forgiving effect of screwing it all in now what you want to do is screw your final pod now for the bottom rail I suggest going flush on top and with the top rail make sure you don't stick ing higher because you're still going to put a two by four cap through this so make sure you don't is more than flush once you screw all the screws together we can assemble really you can see this cap is very forgiving for putting a screw angle it will still sink flush so you wouldn't have a problem with the ideas that are trying to make that screw long enough to operate even 40 years from now when the deck is completely rotten these screws will still hold something it's a bit of a stretch but the stretch is ion isn't such a bad concept so to assemble the bottom rail even though we use the noses to rest in order to set the angle lift it up about an inch take it out the less it would contact your deck the longer it will last put that head screw in there set this up and get rid of the twist these are awesome now listen let's go through this again this comes set up for a traditional 42 inch railing system which is great if you are building something to code so someone doesn't fall off the stairs and plunge to her final death but what we're doing is just creating a safety railing for grandma to come home and visit and it's not that high so what we did is take the part off top and passed it through the sierra. it's not a railing above your head which is obviously 42 inches that's hard most older people don't have a lot of shoulder strength and use their biceps and triceps muscles when climbing a railing and when putting up safety rails and toilets , it's usually pretty low so they can have their arms straight against their body and they can grab something like this ok so if your railing is like this even if she's grabbing it and she slips she'll let go she doesn't have The stre needs to hold your body weight if you slip at that partial angle, so make sure you have a railing and be older people in mind, cut it down if you get the chance, if not make it wider and put it up. on a second handrail to them we just drop this bad boy here one at a time there's really no rhyme or reason for this to feel really sloppy and stupid but when you get to a point where you're happy just hit it . everything fits nicely and everything rotates into place start at the top align it in the middle adjust the screw and set it down press down on that top row there we go i'll help you pull nice and tight and then i'll do the same all the way to the bottom get it in position well i can't find that happy place here we go one more deaf here we go down the angle so we have our entire railing system set to 31 and a half degrees so we can do the top plate first thing you want to do is cut one end of 31 1/2 degrees so what you want to do is just go down here close one I've got a weird look on your face line coming up and then mark it when you realign with your 31 and 1/ 2 degrees because it will be exactly the same, okay and this point here. and this point here should be the same as the one below if the 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 short it won't fit into place and it won't but it's good because I can shorten it.

I can't shorten it even more the second time. Makes sense. Daylight does not pass. That's perfect. I love it. color to color here and here relatively speaking I'm going to track this down oh that was very well done that was really good to see how many why would I give four three hands okay? I'll do the same on the other side. flush so in a perfect world this is supposed to be a little higher but that's why the system is forgiving because we're using a five quarter board to top all this off so I got an inch over the lang overhang and as you can see here it extends so far past the post that there is no traditional line of sight where you can see if there are small spaces or anything around it so really forgive young carpenters like me this is the part of the job where i really piss off the security trolls, yeah i'm using my saw without a pair of glasses because i wish i could see what i'm doing.

I'm doing when I'm doing crazy things like this now I'm going to line up my cut I'm holding my safety blade my guard out of the way I'm going to line this up and I'm going to go and much better and from the other side and from the other angle oh if you think I'm auditioning for America's Got Talent, look at that, do I get a gold buzzer? There we go, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, remember I want to line this up so that I'm not drilling any of the railing hardware down through the middle three points just so it doesn't lean on me.

I'm going to run a little low, let's get this really perfect little torque. I'm going to take this extra step. I'll put it directly on the post. on the side to link to this post too but i notice my two by four has a natural crack go throw a screw at it it will just cause it to split so i'll leave it alone here is my top plate i need my 31 and a half degree angle if I measure like this I'm actually going to have something a lot longer so if you want to measure this the way you do you turn it around and lift it up now that you're measuring from side to side that's fine there we go now we put our 45 in a moment as far as rail districts go she often looks at mum without a map same thing now if she doesn't grip very well and closes that gap the first time just retighten the screw and tighten it again when the grandmas come over, let them know this is it for them, you can get out of it max, so thanks for joining us for our exciting series on how to restore a deck you thought was hopeless.

We have plenty of projects on our playlists for you, so if you love home renovation, do it yourself. guru and you want to get your hands dirty and fix your house then join us on that playlist because we can show you how to fix your basements your bathrooms your kitchens whatever is in your house we have a video for you now this video will have a bit More tags at the end because Max will be demonstrating how he seals this deck in a few weeks from now and tagging it at the end of the video so stay tuned because it's a great system that seals. it prevents water from getting into the wood and prevents it from working well, making it low maintenance.

This is the lowest maintenance program you can get, so forget spending all your money on all those fancy bakes. real number find out how to stamp it and you will be very happy with the result now listen if you have not subscribed to our channel before do it press 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 visit us on instagram at DIY home renovation and we'll see you next time