How to Fix Your Deck | A to Z

In this video, I'm going to show you the secret to turning a

deck

that you think you just have to rip out, throw in the trash, rescue and turn into something beautiful like this, if so, if you're a homeowner and you have a

deck

project. that you think simply can't be saved, but you don't have the budget for something new. We will guide you through the following videos in which we put together all the step-by-step secrets to building a deck like. Now our system also works if it's a new deck, so no matter what

your

situation is, we have the answers to

your

questions in the next series, we'll show you how to frame it and how to turn it off. the railing posts, how to attach the railing, how to put the railing on, how to cover it, how to trim it, how to edge it, how to put stairs on it and then all the decorative accessories you'll want to make your deck look spectacular. dollars and then we also have a video that will show you how to treat the deck because this is very important if you want a maintenance free wood surface, everything you need to know is available right away so if you are like most people, We are living in a house that has a pre-existing terrace that was built with great intentions but not the highest level of skill, so today we are faced with the terrace that says dead because the plant that was on top is not nice.

Look what's sad is that the substructure of this deck I can tell just by looking at it is still nice and solid but everything on top is completely rotted, hasn't been handled properly, hasn't been weather treated and isn't it was built properly so it could dry out and has just been rotting where it is for the last 15 years. It's a shame so let's take care of all of this and remove it so we can rebuild it and have a beautiful place to hang out again one of the things you have to be very careful about when you're in this situation is not to get carried away it's very easy to take out a mallet and the lever destroying everything, but remember that we want to put it back together. a new platform to the same structure, so we're going to have a little bit of a labor intensive process, bye, so we discovered very quickly here, when we pushed the railing in, that they were using the wrong size screws to build everything, so Let's find out if they put the floor in with the right screws, no, okay, so this wood is an inch and a quarter, which means this screw has to be at least two and a half inches.

Okay, you want it to measure one and a half. times longer than the material you are placing and that just isn't cutting it, so they are short. It's more or less a trim screw. It is designed to fit these small trim boards into a frame. Yes they built the entire platform this way. We've actually done ourselves a big 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 turning and that's just turning, so I don't know if that's in the wood. or if it's rotting underneath or if it's just these screws, oh, every once in a while they're going to grab.

Wow, we might be in a situation where we'll be able to, yeah, try to get as many out as we can. I think we'll use them. the lever to lift it up because of that situation, that means the top of all these joists are going to be compromised, so we put in our new deck lumber, we're actually going to have to back it up with a three-inch screw so we're going past the compromised number. to solid meat again and that will solve your problem and allow you to save the entire substructure here. Wow, yeah, that was done really well.

This is a great way to take a look at this wood down here, as well as. there is a little bit of organic material build up which is normal it's actually in pretty good shape and you'll see all these broken screws oh yeah yeah there are a lot of people who think the acq screw which is a deck screw that will last forever. This is a great reminder that it is not. If you don't install it correctly and treat your deck, the screws will stay out and rot and become useless. To be honest with you, it's surprising that when I picked this up I expected 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. It can't dry out and is not rotten yet. The top of this wood can still hold this screw. Is incredible. I'm very satisfied with the result. Now they only use a 2 by 6 frame, so there is quite a bit. bounce on this platform, so we're going to shore it up a little bit just to get rid of the bounce and that way we can save this thing that you have with the summer day, so just a quick tip, we're actually going to cut some of the barrier plastic off. vapor that goes under this platform we'll open it up as we go so if we're walking you know something that won't be full of mud and then when we finish building this little project 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 arise.

The biggest enemy you have when you build it so close to the ground is what I call it sauna effect because the sun heats up and pulls all the moisture out of the ground and draws it into the wood because it really overheats underneath, so if you don't have a lot of air flow under the nearby porch o When your deck is close to the ground, it will rot prematurely, so if I lay on a round sheet of plastic, you will remove about 90% of the moisture that builds up under the ground and gives it much more to your terrace.

It's time to release that moisture back into the atmosphere so that it has a drying period as well every night and isn't wet in the morning when you start again, that's where the problem arises if it's wet when you start the day. In fact, you're going to rot that thing in five years. If this seems even to you, I'll suggest you go seek medical attention. This is extremely brutal. I'm not sure what they were using here other than just oh, no. I have no idea it's even attached to the house which is level, the last section here falls off, this piece here seems to be pretty consistent with the front edge beam and then the middle one collapses because it's carrying all the weight due to the shape in which they built this.

Again, this is the cost of trying to assemble without wood long enough to get the job done. I find it strange why they didn't go from that point to that point. This is a successful mission, we achieved most of the cover. boards here, the way we are doing it, we leave our wood intact and it is in good condition, however it is obvious that this was a DIY project, there are a lot of structural issues here, we are going to have to make a list. devising a plan to restore all of that before we can read is not surprising.

Just by looking at them when we arrived we knew there would be some surprises, this is not disappointing, so as a homeowner, if you open your terrace and see something completely untidy like this, you may feel a little overwhelmed, but the reality is that the basics of the In the next video, we'll show you how to restructure your deck, but just make the structural changes so you can put it away and not have to get involved in rip everything out and start from scratch, so we'll talk real quick. on structural frames for exterior terraces and there are two types of terraces that you can build, one is the one that really has a structure and foundation and is attached to the house, which when attached to the building and all the posts that go to the ground is on a base that goes below the frost line if you have one in your area or is on something solid that won't be in direct contact with the ground so it doesn't cause rot and premature fall of your deck in this situation.

This DIY homeowner who built this deck did a combination of both and you'll see this all the time. People think it's a really good idea to attach it to the house and then they just put some 4x4 posts in the ground and pack it up. a little bit maybe it's all a mess so we have all sorts of movement in the middle it's almost completely sunken out of sight and I'll leave this here so you can take a quick look, there's an inch of space over four and a half feet here and this is already the lower part of the platform when I go and set my level like this.

I'm looking good. I could stick my whole hand under here. This is a 5 foot level, sorry, 6 foot. It's an 8 foot platform and you get an idea of ​​how dramatic the drop in the middle is. Here we can also see that in that corner over there they didn't know how to level it completely, so it's attached to the house and the last foot and a half is attached to the post and the post is buried. You can see that going down the row of bricks here are the most visible and dramatic words. Now it's okay to build on top of your concrete step. you can use this as a frame, that's not a problem, it's not okay to put a rim beam on it and then use it as hanging lumber for the next piece of beams.

This is still only attached to two screws on a 2x4 in that corner and a couple of screws to a post that sinks floor by floor here, so when that post falls, the entire deck falls with it and it creates a real disaster and you can see how everything falls, of course, the end here starts to stick. So far the screws are coming loose everything is starting to rot it is an absolute disaster of course nothing is ever square but what we can do in this situation is come up with a strategy to restore this frame so we can put a new one back platform surface. above now the only thing the owner who built this got right is he has his joists on a 16 inch center so we could start with that we're not too worried about it being out of square because the original deck although it wasn't square with the house visibly didn't seem to be square to the sun, so if you really want to save your deck structure, what you want to do is figure out where all the load is and this is what I mean from all points. on this platform they meet in the middle of this post, this carries most of the weight, even when you walk this way, all the weight is transferred on these issues throughout the platform to this point, so every step that is taken is to push this into the ground so what we want to do right away is remove it because it's less than 8 feet here and it's attached to the house if we can make this front ridge stable and sit on floating blocks so it doesn't sink further.

I can lay new wood and span the entire distance, using proper joist supports. I'll be able to get another 20 or 30 years out of this before it starts sinking any more and even if it does, it's a really simple fix. lift the platform and place some shim under it to level it again. I know it's not perfect, but let's face it here in the real world, when you get a lemon, you have to find a way to make lemonade, so this is what we're going to do. Do it today, the only other thing we're going to change besides that is we're going to raise that back corner.

I'm going to show you tips and tricks so you can just cut, lift and reinstall and you're not going to have to tear this whole thing apart and throw it in the landfill for me. I would rather have a platform that is 90% structurally sound and then start over with a new investment, all that time, all that waste, all that tree in the trash just doesn't make any sense. The bottom line is that platforms go down the drain sooner or later. What you want to do is find a way to build them so that they are solid, safe and enjoyable for a reasonable period of time based on your investment.

We're going to repave here, put up some nice railings, we just need to shore this up, so we'll get another 20 or 30 years out of it before it's completely out of use and I think we can do that. Pay attention. I'm going to show you everything. My tips and tricks, so before we start cutting this up and repairing it, I just wanted to talk real quick about the basic framing technology and the options that are available on the market to help extend the life of a deck. One of them is construction tape. It's basically like a very thick tar paper, it's self-adhesive and the idea is that when you put it on top of the joists and wrap the sides, you can see when we remove this pallet and you can see the effect.

These are the spaces that exist. between the boards, okay, generally speaking, that's not water damaged, but here you can see that this is where the boards were joined, and that's complete garbage now if you're building your deck and you're making a spine of fish or a picture frame and you box and add extra wood and you'll have cut ends like this, this was a cedar deck and even the cedar will rot on you and having all that exposed wet organic material stuck there all the time, that's your enemy, so yeah We're not going to be the type of person who takes the time to pressure wash all the joints all the time and then use some of this type of protection for theplatform and will help stretch the length of the platform.

The other thing we're going to do What I use here are head locking screws. I love this technology. These things are amazing because they replace the strength of a 3h galvanized lag screw and allow me to add structural strength to each piece of wood I am tying. I do not trust. in nails or screws to have enough cut resistance and be creative with my repairs and I can carry the entire weight of an entire family being here without any risk to their safety, so fasten your seat belts here we go there we go, let's see, that's already a Big improvement, just getting rid of that stupid wedge I think.

When I look at this, the concept of having 2x4 sleepers on top of the concrete pad is sound. I don't like the fact that the cotton base, two by four, comes out here and stops and is not attached to this ridge plate. except probably for some nails, it seems like these nails are in everything, except now I see screws here, I just can't be sure of anything. The plan is that this 2x6 needs to be adequately reinforced at each end so that the Could it be attached who is actually carrying the weight that this 2x6 is transferring right now?

There are two deck screws over here and there are a couple of nails on the 4x4 post over here. I can see what the interesting screws are that carry eighty pounds each. It's a terrible pure strength material for a deck frame because the acq screws will break over time, especially near the main entrance area because people use salt when they have ice in the winter and that salt corrodes, which is why we had problems with a lot of the screws here tearing out the deck boards, so we're going to get some proper joist support in here, we're also going to get some proper structural screws in there and then I think what I want to do is cut this out, so I can stay with this two by six and I can tie it with new beams 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 beam hanger and tie this. two by six and at least that's going to straighten my deck, get rid of this arch and once I have it straight and I'll do the same thing, I'll remove this whole set of 2x6 beams here, I don't.

I have a choice, I mean, probably the only other thing I can do is cut this one back, remove this hanger and then put another beam here and then lift this whole thing into place, that's probably the best we'll be able to do. and that will transfer all my load and remove this Center pole, both of them completely, so the only place I'll have repair problems is on the perimeter because I don't ever want to have to do that. crawl under the deck, I will never have access in the future, but if we use the right type of skirting we can always access the repairs on the post on the outside, so we will make a couple of cuts and put on a couple of new boards they'll straighten it all out and then we'll show you how to fix the other 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 it. the edge on the other side, the last beam, there is a full piece of wood and that is the only full piece of wood in this entire build except the 2x4 or the other end, everything else in the middle was cut off, not sure Why was it necessary?

I think originally they probably should have stopped right here with the post, crossed a full beam and tied it at that point and all of this could have been a full beam if they had received delivery of the longer wood. This would have been avoided, so I'll jump right into this. This beam is 16 inches in 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 a way out, you gotta love it, basically, everything I'm going to do, I'm just going to mark it with a screw here real quick. so now I have my place where I'm going to cut and once I've cut this I'm also going to remove this and this and the post and then I'll put in a new 2 by 6 with the beam. hang and transfer this load now, we are not transferring much load in much space.

I know we traditionally like to duplicate them, but let's be honest, these platforms have been here for 20 years and in this condition they were still helping to keep people safe. and out of the ground, so if we rebuild it in a similar way with better technology, we will take another 20 years off of all the weight of sinking it into the ground, it is actually under pressure, it bends and emerges now. that the pressures disappeared, that's incredible, okay and in the same way, this 16 inch line here we are going to want to keep this piece of 2 by 6 as well so we don't have to replace the entire area of ​​the carriage that we are going to cut this one too , since they are going to remove it anyway, it is not a structural nail, why am I not surprised?

Oh, all the way to the deck, this whole thing is on one roof, now it's total incompetence. Amazing, you know there is a time and a place. to save money when you're building something, but when you're relying on these fasteners to do all the structural carrying, you really can't afford to go and, oops, not buy the right nails, you're in the store buying a hanger pick . remove the structural screws they can come in a box to look like they have the bit in the box it's really not that hard 10 bucks and they save someone from a serious injury you'll notice someone I'm cutting with this. actually swinging it back and forth is a reciprocating motion meaning the blades shoot in and out of the housing but at the end of the day there is a lot of bouncing but the more saws move too fast yeah that I shouldn't be able to do so now, what do we have here?

Hey, hey, finishing the nails. I love it. Now someone named screws on the other. Some of them are galvanized. Some of them are not someone who is building this with a jar of bras. Whatever they picked up. that they use is amazing, so there are a lot of connections made here, there are eight joist supports pulled intermittently, how many at the other end of the joist support is a piece of wood that is glued with the skirt screws or Oh my goodness . You know how to finish nails, why bother putting in hardware to get these boards in the shape they are not needed?

I guess we have more of those really awesome screws, here's the tip for you, if you get a meal and it's all soft and weak and you can't hammer it, put it on its side, now turn it this way, okay, you can take it out. the other side, so now you have an idea what I'm talking about, I already cleaned everything, okay, I put my whole hand under it, but when we put our new piece of wood that spans the entire space, I lift it up towards the floor. beam BAM my entire deck will be flush it's not level yet but at this point all the load goes from the wall to the outside edge and then it's just a matter of fixing those few spots where we'll be ready to go just let's go to throw. on a second pair of hands, that's what I like to call it.

I'm going to turn this one over and we're going to set it up and this is how I'm going to measure, so I know I'm perfectly level and I know this. it's not square so I'm going to take both measurements yeah take my monster triangle yeah well that's not so bad here we go so when you're building a deck you don't always have the luxury of having the right tool for the right moment. work and as a homeowner if you have a skill saw you have everything you need to make the frame plus one of these so what I do is I can use this as my guard so I'm going to set the depth of my sword and this creates that space on my plate okay so I can run over this yeah I'm okay so what I do is I hold this against my wood I hold the SOB plate against the triangle and I can actually run. until my blade is exactly where I want it, I step back, turn it on and run the saw against my triangle that I have pinched in place with my hand, which is a technique to cut all the dimensional wood, you don't need to use the Cut saw to so you can have the saw with you with your triangle and you can run around your deck making all the cuts and cutting them on the spot boom boom boom boom flip them over and bolt them on, you'll save yourself a lot of running back and forth to a stationary saw like this one now put my screw in the corner, I have my second pair of hands again and I can just slide this in and put it on the back rail, slide it into place, okay, let's just put this flush with the front rail, test the screw , so 2x6 requires one screw for every two inches, that's its basic concept.

Each screw has 80 pounds of structural strength attached for a total strength that is 240 pounds of screw on each end when we're using deck screws now around here, we'll end up using our joist hangers, which are crazy straw, we're talking about a couple thousand pounds of shear strength, we'll do the same thing here. Classic example of an owner we built the platform. I didn't know what I was doing, but I was close. You know, there's a lot of what was done here that was pretty good with a few saveable edits. Remember every time you're disappointed with something if you just throw it all in the trash and start over, that's a lot of trash and then the world today throwing things in the trash for the sake of posterity is just, I think, irresponsible, so if you don't like what you have, fix it, don't throw it away. up and that's almost perfect, except this corner is a little bit low and all of our fronts are a little bit low, so now we have our flat structure, we'll call it and we have one, two, three, four, five points where all the wood. dirt and that's what we're going to fix next because we really don't want them to stay in the dirt so all we have to do is cut them off at the bottom and then we'll lift up the whole platform and put in some stone. dust and a concrete block, then we can lay it down and everything will be absolutely fine.

I think it's important to note here that this two-by-six does most of the work when it comes to hauling cargo back and forth for everything. that's crossing the middle and this post doesn't really have much structural importance at this point, so I'm going to cut it so the front can be raised at best. I'll probably form a small 2x4 inch scab on it. It's there just for stability, but since the platform has a tendency to sink and not rise, I have no problem putting a scab on it and just giving myself a little more strength, but obviously I don't think it's really significant when a guy doesn't even remove your step welcome mat, yeah baby, when you build the deck, you ain't no hungry poor man, no way, no foundation, no concrete, nothing, just dig a hole, stick it in the dirt and let the clay and the frost does the rest now the idea here is to raise the deck and level it when you are building a deck structure you will also think about water removal, this front step has a slope away from the house so the water that passes the platform will simply go under the ground are you here? that's perfectly fine the rest of this deck the boards will go from left to right so there is a gap between each board to remove water, no need to keep any kind of slope here so we'll try to raise this up to a perfect level .

Here's our temporary support that makes our space, yes, three inches, pretty intense. It is important to note that in our region check your local Building Code, but any structure like this. that we build in our region under 24 inches has no building code so there are no rules so you can make your whole deck out of popsicle sticks if you want but just so I can sleep at night I like to use some intelligence, some structural fasteners. a little bit of science, but you know legally, but this other owner made it okay so he was lousy, but it wasn't bad because he's not a legal stranger.

I'm putting some limestone projections in here just so I can level this out. and then I'm going to throw a slab of concrete. The idea here is that I want to, yes, place that block right there, perfect friends, if I'm 1/8th of a degree away from the level, I'll be perfectly happy with that, since it's structural. sound, throw this on 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, okay, I'm also going to attack from this side and Take a look over here and we'll see if we're relatively in the same place that looks good, yeah, so I'm going to take it up to here now, this time I'm going to lift it up to my line and then approximately. an eighth of an inch or so that way, once I'm done putting all my aggregate down here, I'll be able to tamp it back into place on our screw, watch this all the way to my line forever, so with this I'm basically making asplinted knowing that I put enough screws in this block and that there are basically six.

I have 500 pounds of shear resistance 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 strength simultaneously before we would risk hanging under a structural failure. I'm pretty sure we're not going to end up with that kind of scenario. Well, this is really great for leveling things that you buy on the order of peak blinders, so my favorite technique for installing a joist support and this one is a 2 by 6, it means that the support is a little shorter than the material you I'm using.

Okay, pull it together so it's close and then you can force it. Open now, they have these tabs here, so once it's seated at the bottom, would you use that tab? It comes as a little nail prong that keeps it in place. Once it's in place, you can come now that you don't have. To have more three hands, now these screws are inch and a half, which is perfect for this scenario. You will never screw the wood and get your legs, which is important to note because you can buy them longer and if you have them. which, by accident, people have been known to knock a screw into their knee before, when you're making a beam hanger, each of these little holes has a screw in it.

This is designed to attach the bracket to your room or to your rafters. It's designed to keep this piece of material from separating from the bracket so it doesn't fall off the seat, so especially if you're building a deck and you're using technology like this and you're getting inspections, make sure you're using the proper fastener, this is a number 10 ok it's really great for outdoors and it's not a coated screw it's acq compliant but it's not a kota screw it's an alloy it's forged it will never rust not like galvanized nails. like hcq screws that will never rust and if you are not using a forged alloy in your Simpson Strong Tie it will not pass inspection and sooner or later one of these days it will just fall apart, the copper and pressure treatment, and the wood of the pressure tree will crumble. what caused the rust that kills the screw, so the coating only protects it for a certain time.

So when it comes to structure, we deal with point loading, we deal with brackets, we deal with forged bolts, those items will never rust and never will. fail, I mean all boards can peel off and rot and that's okay, you're not going to fall through your deck, there you go, so basically we've rebuilt our deck, we've got all our point loads taken care of, we've got our new joists packed in, we have joist supports everywhere, we have put some new head locking screws through the plate into the wall just to strengthen things because it looked a little soft here on the side, you have a 2x4 that carries our burden.

This is really not right, but what we're going to do is transfer all of our load points on this front of the deck directly from the frame to the porch using the cedar move technique, so the reality is that our beam package It is the one that supports the weight. 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 destroying everything and no one is in the mood for that. These covers have already been here for 20 years. 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 scraps to do the job.

You've got two of them cut out here and a little piece in the middle. It's not going to cut it folks, when you're stabbing something like this into a wall using a 1 foot piece it's probably fine, but when you're doing it on the floor you really want to laminate most of the board if not all of it. and then here's the key every six inches you want to go from high to low to high like the Big W is all over the board, which will give you that strength of a triangle that can't bend if it's attached that way, so that's how we do it up, down and up, okay, um, ten screws, 80 pounds each, 800 pounds, that's not going anywhere anymore, so now it's not just flat, oh, I love it.

You know, when you come down here you call a person like that, you almost see it. down to the last choice at the last second, coming together and touching each other, that's absolutely sexy. I don't think we could have done as good a job with new wood, this is a bit excessive right, the reality is that three of these screws will hold the whole thing together. cover, these replaced the strength of a 3/8 galvanized bolt, meaning I don't have to drill, tap into a container, put on a washer and nut and then tighten it all together. I can just drag this with my impact driver and I'm structurally sound forever, these things cost about three to four dollars a screw, but if you ask me, I think it's worth taking the last step that 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: it has a skirt that you can attach it to and it will be flush when we attach our post for our our system of railings we don't have to surface mount it, we don't have to rely on just the first 4 or 5 inches of wood to screw in, we can actually cut our post to get here so we can fix it here in the middle and with the top rail that It creates three points of contact that make the entire platform so strong that no one will ever be able to fall through the railing.

I think I did that when we started the job, okay? let's talk about the deck, there's our surface, we want a 42 inch deck rail, and in our design we would love to have our post a little higher than the actual one to have room for a decorative LED light at the top of this corner and in this corner, so to be able to perform that task, here is a 2 by 4 on the plane below, it will be made like a T, like this, and this part will have the pre-drilled holes for the The axles come down, okay, so we have this 2x4, we have this two by four and then a five quarter board on top of that even more and that gives the drink life surface, so we want to add all of that together 5 and a half quarter inches. and then that's our butt 42 mark, we're going to add two more 44s, so we're going to go forty-four inches above the surface of the deck here, which is okay an inch and a quarter because it's also an inch and a quarter until we hit the frame, I have to remember that and then we want to go inside the frame that takes us to forty-five and a quarter no, we buy eight foot posts, okay, so an 8 foot post if we cut it in half is 48, that only gives us about three and a half inch extension we don't get to the next rail at the bottom, it's not the end of the world, but I would really like to do that where the handrail joins, so what we're going to do is this: Let's do the math for the middle rail here, the uniform times four, okay to intersect with this, okay, so our 44 will come up to here, so 44 inch tunic or half and five and a quarter that takes us to sugar two and three. forty-four quarters, that's forty-one quarter, okay for that middle post and then we'll add the 504 inches on top of that to go into the deck frame and then this will be long enough to go all the way to the end. down, so if our main intersection points on the handrail and in the corner can be really buried, that's great, so we'll cut the first one into forty-one quarters and it'll be four shoes here and the rest we'll use here. and we'll put it at the right height and hopefully it'll be deep enough.

There's some work here, okay, so I can put a screw in there, that's where I wanted to sit at the height, and I can find my place without even putting a level in just to start when you're building your frames right before you start building the deck, make sure you have the structural posts in place and my structural, I'm talking about a railing structure, the idea here is that we want to know exactly what we're going to do with the way we cut our wooden posts from two meters and a half, this one measures a little more than two and a half meters long.

What I do is grab some miles from my order. I like to visualize space. This is basically the height of that railing plus an inch because you want to keep some space down there so things stay nice and dry, then there's another two-by-four and then a five-quarter board which leaves us with almost three inches of piece that is perfect for the LED. We usually cap those lights when they sit about an inch above the top and that will give everything a nice, clean, taut look and then the shorter pole will just be brought in here somewhere in the middle when let's get into that kind of math that's part of the railing design, so we'll talk about that a little bit later, but what we want to do is just make a mental note that this is going to be the height that our center post will come out of this platform up to this point.

Okay, that's not all. I know we're just doing framing, but I'm going to show you a little trick while you're building your deck that will help you keep your railings looking pristine because you want to have a lot of consistency. with the spaces, so what we're going to do is take our two axle rails and we're just going to snap them into place. Now the idea is that it comes from one side flush and the other side flush and immediately. because they are pre-drilled from the factory the spacing from the post of the first spindle is exactly the same and this is where the intersection will occur so I have a four foot section to the right so now this is about my center visually if that's my center and I put my four by four posts inside that corner of the frame.

Okay, I'm going to go to this post. I'm going to have a quarter inch and here my shaft is going to have to be cut in half, that's stupid, so what do we do? What we're going to do is move here to this location where I have from the corner here to about two inches from the corner here to this about two inches which is now my location, it's perfect and I'm going to measure from my choice package post It's just over an inch, now I can move everything out of my way now that I have my number.

The irony is that to make this perfectly square I want to be about an inch from my choice to the beginning of my wood which is right next to all my structural screws, not a pleasant surprise so this is where my post will go and It will be nice and tight. What I'm doing here is not relying on the screws through the rim plate to hold the post, you'll find these things love to twist them over time, don't forget when the cedar grows, the cedar grows like this, okay, when you cut it, he wants to untangle, that's why they always twist, so when you put up a post, even if it's overnight, you have to have a top rail attached to screw it all together temporarily and make sure it doesn't all go wrong because you don't go out in the morning and you're like a candy cane platform, what does this do? it gives me a lot more support because now when there is pressure or force on the railing here for hours, it gets leverage here and then the bottom inside the platform wants to go in that direction, so by putting this block here, I restrict the ability. of the bottom of that pole to swing towards the platform, it makes the top of the platform much stronger, so now when I'm pulling on this, I'm not only pulling on the top, but I'm also creating a force. at the bottom of this post facing in, but with that lock there I don't have to rely on the threading of these screws to keep it in place.

I also have the shear strength of the screws going into the 2x6 here at three different points, it helps. keep it all together and the reason I have included this setup are posts and railing blocks in the framing video is because if you don't set up your rails and you are blocking before placing your deck in the only option you have What is left is to make them a notch and hang them on the side where they break easily. You could use that fancy little post cap and screw them in and screw them in and that's all well and good in some scenarios, but in reality this will be a railing and there will actually be people coming and going and safety is a concern here because there will be two stairs. , so we want to make sure that all of this is as rigid as humanly possible and that's all part of the structure, so let's finish it. up and it will be time to start putting up the deck boards so today is deck day, last night we put all our wood on the deck just to store it, leaving it on the ground is not a good idea because it is very very long, so if you put it on your neck, which should be level, it will helpkeep the board straight and they won't twist overnight so let's replenish the stack now real quick so we can start laying it down and the idea here is we want to start with finishing the deck, don't start on the house folks , I always start where your platform ends.

This will allow you to get a perfect measurement for your overhang. They can take into account what type of plinth system they are going to use. and there are a few that would work for you, so we'll go over those options and then you'll get out your jigsaw and cut out your posts so everything is nice and nice and nice and then we'll get going. I'm really important to have a straight line when you start. It's really, really important to make sure that when you order your deck boards, you grab a few extra ones. You will always be disappointed when they are delivered to you.

There will always be a couple in there that you just want to add. trash and we'll show you a tip and trick on what to do with the wood after you're done. This is the railing and shorter pieces, so even the crazy big work pieces will be useful later, so we have to sort your wood. but for now let's get moving, it will move a couple of boards at a time and that will help us fix the really bad thing right away. My system for installing five-quarter deck boards is as follows: Take your load and start distributing it and you will quickly identify boards that have bad warping.

I call it the hockey stick collection and they're all here. Okay, now when you take a look at what I'm doing here, you can see very quickly that I probably have three or four boards in there that I can use. There is only half of its length, which is really simple. I have handrail sections here that I can use with that wood as well, so I don't want to install them on the deck, esp. at first because I don't like to fight with those tables if I don't have to if I have to force a couple of them in which we'll probably just number here.

I can say I probably have two or three that I'm going to have to force, so that's fine, but I want to identify the straightest wood that 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. as far as being straight, that's where we need to start now, once we're straight, we also want to take a look at the crown on a deck board. It can be really uncomfortable, especially when they are 16 feet long. Oh, rule number one when you work with these things, every time you see a sticker, get rid of it.

There's nothing worse than finishing up and seeing stickers sticking out of your deck anyway. You'll see that all the wood has a green color, so what you want to do is take a look at the green, it's like a bowl in many cases and that bowl will start like this and everything will curve. Over time, what you want to do is have a crown facing up, which is the top of the rainbow facing up, so it looks like this. Okay, as it dries, it will try to dry the down ends that are already screwed into place.

So the board stays flat, if you leave it upside down it will warp and dry out and by trying to lift the screws you run the risk of these things coming loose over time and you get this suction cup effect, it's not very nice. Welcome, so crown now, let's take a look at this wood. It has a pretty decent shape. I'm just going to do a visual inspection. I'm looking for bits that are missing rough surfaces, knots that have come loose and fallen off, but I think the board is in good shape. shape, so here we are, I'm happy with that one, it's nice, tight, nice and straight.

A little rubbing is just dirt and it will come off eventually. We give it a quick, light sandpaper and now I'm done. I'm also looking for my second best board and it will go on the nose so it has to be perfectly straight as well. We also want to see what condition this table is in. We are fine and if your board is longer than your deck. and you're going to make cuts, this one has a split, yeah, so there's a split on this board right here, so what I'm going to do is take this board, I'm going to flip it over. so I'm installing the split on the cut side, not my install side, and that will help make sure a big gap doesn't appear next year that will get wet and stay wet and promote early rot, so I want to remove that problem before you start and that the crown is in the correct shape.

Get rid of my sticker now. Let's finish this. This is the advantage of having longer boards than you are going to use. Now there are many people. There is this misconception out there that cedar only comes in 16 foot lengths, that is not true. I can get it up to 20 feet. We have a couple locations in town that have great relationships with mills and they give me 20 foot cedar boards so I can make an 18 19 foot deck and I still just install all my splits and cut them when I'm done and that's worth your weight in gold because at the end of the day the last thing you want to do is build your deck with joints in the joists. that's why we are replacing this deck, the one that was here was cedar and if they did that they had short wood and that caused early rot it was a disaster so we are going to avoid that at all costs because when we are installing that is has one bad split and it's already cupped, so it's upside down and inside out.

Now the reason I'd like to take my extra time here is that the process to install it is just screwing it in, so once I start on my screws, I don't like to stop and inspect and flip and twist, that's the wrong time. to do it because usually there are other people helping you put in all the screws, someone is going to take the board in the back of the head, just take the time, put it in, make it pretty. very ready to get started here is an example of a decision you need to make for yourself.

I'm bleeding, imagine this board right in this position is crowned, it's crowned the way we want, that's the most ideal situation, unfortunately, it also comes with some serious edge damage here in two spots, probably caused by some little kid in the store where the forklift doesn't work. What the hell is he doing? No big deal, okay, yes, it's crowned the wrong way, but then I'd rather it be crowned the wrong way. I have a nasty ugly stain showing and since we ordered this in one delivery, I don't have much choice. I have to use this board because it's so straight that I think it's worth saying it the wrong way, reminding myself of this.

I'll take the board off the wall like this, now I know this wreath is facing the wrong way, and when I install it I'll use a little bit of construction adhesive on the stud just to make sure it doesn't get the Buckley right, so before I go to December we want to make sure we have our vision for our brisket in place and that's the area we're closing under the cover. We have to make sure there are no animals crawling underneath. I don't want any skunks to make a home here because that would really ruin the atmosphere so let's talk about options so you can make a decision on how you want to make yours first of all with your first board in place and you need to measure.

Go to the wall and find out what kind of portion you will have left in the house. We're going to have half board, which is perfect, so I'm not going to worry about the calculations because I'm moving this either way. To make my skirt, I'll be fine if you end up with just a small piece, you might consider making some of your spaces a little bigger to end up with a full board, but that's another story, here we go. first board against all my posts I have a three and a half piece of 4x4 plus the one and a half that measures five inches these are five quarters by six they actually end up being about five and an eighth boom five and a quarter here we go look at it As it is, it's not terrible, it leaves a nice space in the back, so if I finish like this, no, it's easy, but how do you finish the platform?

If I put some material here, it's going to be in 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 up a lattice or you could put up a skirt because the skirt is like a fence board and it's only 5/ 8 well this is an inch and a quarter so it's going to have a nice gap, it's going to look very clean and you can put a vertical skirt underneath. The other option you have, of course, is to create a ledge at the beginning of the platform now, since This will be a staircase.

I know it takes a little more work, but if you were to do the math and set yourself up with a nice stair nosing and then a skirt, then you'll have something to attach your steps to everything in sight. clean and small and then the end result is that this overhang is the same as the one on the staircase, so in order to set this up we want to measure this about an inch and a quarter so that after our five-eighths we still have five-eighths of overhang Like the 5/8 overhang because two of these boards on a traditional riser that you can buy at the store as pre-made are the same depth as the stair plus 5/8 that's fine so if you start with a 5/8 then your dash is on, you're going to end up with the same nose size on each stair and that's a good way to end up, it doesn't require a lot of math, so 5/8 plus 5/8 of an inch and 1/4, so we're just going to take our tape and we're going to measure an inch back into the room right there, okay, and then I'm going to measure from here to my deck board that's against all of my posts, and I've got a one inch gap on all of them.

Right 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 expansion contraction so while my joints are consistent, so what I'm going to do now is say, here we go. I have my system in place. I have to mark 7/8s around each of these posts and that's a really easy way to do it. This, then, what I'm going to do is place my giant triangle here against my platform. Now look at this because all of these corners are nicely rounded and the system here with a rounded platform is actually quite dangerous if you turn it around.

This way you'll make contact with the solid side and actually make the mark in the right place, okay, here we go. I always come back and slide up to your post and when you cut you 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 when we're done we'll be back with the sander anyway, now the trick here is we want to do this. It looks like it was built perfectly from scratch, which it isn't, we are reclaiming the old frame, so each of these deck post locations is a little different, so the second of the fourth winner in contact with the wood, this one and they're 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 extra eight boom which I'm going to go to 3 ./4 on this 7/8 where I'm making contact, is probably the most important measurement in the entire build, once you've done this everything else should go nice and smooth because we've arranged our wood to be straight and have a finish all figured out so this board is the first one you placed behind your post, once you have that as your template all you have to do is make sure everything is spaced consistently, after that you'll be free at home so we can Let's take our jigsaw here now and we're going to align our blades so we really eat the pencil.

Now I want my blade to be right next to the pencil on the outside, so I'm actually cutting the hole just a hair bigger than necessary because I know what's going to happen is this cedar is going to shrink and all these gaps, if I tighten them up too much now, we'll have a good gap later, so I don't want to leave too much gap, this is the trick for you when you're cutting on a curve like this with the jigsaw, you just have to stay on angle it this way so it grabs the wood at the bottom or the blade will tend to bend it tight and you'll end up with the top right on the line but the bottom will stick out and not fit in the hole so just with an inspection quick visual here i saw just one place here where i did it.

It's not deep enough, so I'll take my exact knife. I'm going to clean my edge. Just a note. Jigsaws have no breaks. Make sure the blade stops moving before sitting down and always place it on its side. oh, that's a lesson learned the hard way, so what I'm doing now is putting this board in place so it doesn't move and using this screw just to mark the center of my stud or my joists, 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. I don't have it all buried there, there you go, you want your head a little below the surface, don't leave it.

It will look like garbage, whichWhat happens is that the wood will end up swelling over time and little by little, closing that hole will make it perfect, so if you have seen our previous terrace videos, you will have seen that I am in love. with the camouflage system and it is the type 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 fixes it that way it keeps the entire surface free and clear . of screws and I love that, but here, since we were saving the old frame, we were not sure of the state of the wood and the truth is that the top of the wood in many places has rotted a little and, as a result, I don't want having to rely on the camo screw to hold the soft wood and keep my boards from warping, so we're going to use surfer screws in this case just because it's not new wood, that's really the idea behind this.

When choosing the 3-inch material, we took into account that the wood on the surface might not be up to par with the tobacco and using 3-inch simply solves all that concern. Now it's also the cedar screw, the brown one, here's a note. For you, there are two types of screw colors in the market where we are: green and brown and generally the pressure treated wood came and was green until recently now they have a brown pressure treated wood they still have a pressure treated wood green pressure and this is what I'm going to suggest. I don't care what color your wood is, you buy the brown screw.

Okay, if you buy green wood, use the brown screw. It will seem stupid for the first year, but for the next 39 years. The life of the deck will be the same color as the pressure treated wood once the sun has a chance to hit it for a while. If you use the green screw, it will look great for the first year and look stupid for the next. 39 years people are strict about putting the screw in the exact same place one inch from the edge it has to be one inch from the edge if there is a knot in the wood one inch from the edge don't put a screw there, okay, find somewhere else, to put that screw in, you have to come out of the rings of that knot.

If that knot was right here, I would put my first screw here because I'm not screwing a knot, it's guaranteed to fall apart and explode. and if you have to say you have a knot right where you want to put the screw, what you want to do is mimic the camo screw system by drilling back under the curve until you establish the angle you want and then you can put this screw in. and you can pull a screw that way and that's a great way to get a screw to hold the edge even if it has a knot in it, here we go you'll see it pulls nice and tight, now we'll use the saw later to cut the edge. so it's best to screw all the edges first because that will save you a lot of time and you won't have to screw it in later and risk splitting the wood, so when I started putting that screw in I could feel the resistance of the knot and it was much further away from which was visible there, so the knots probably angled through the wood, so what I did was back out and burned it back by pushing down through the wood once I cleared the knot and then I introduced it.

This board is not perfectly straight. We know this because we took the time to map it all out and what I took here is a board that is not straight to demonstrate how to install it. Now here's the secret. When you have a board that's tight on both ends and the big gap is in the middle, what I've seen a lot of guys do is they grab the board like this and the poet, oh, that's perfect, puts in a screw. but what's not perfect is that the ends are still touching wood to wood and it's very difficult to screw the last board exactly where you want because even when you do that, as soon as I start pulling here, it doesn't close consistently and we don't want to just hit it. the flip over the board because that'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 do that, so take the time to pick up the bad boy and flip him over. finish that way try not to destroy them now that the board is flipped I start to tighten this, you can see, I can get a nice and tight here and then it opens wide on your end, it's much easier to manipulate the end as you Continue because our gap is now perfect here and place my square that will be the gap that I'm using.

I'm going to use my tool to set my gap across the entire project, okay, and of course I'm close to the end. 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 at the ends, so what you want to do is start screwing into the wood. in reverse and push down while going backwards, did you get some smoke and drive it down and it will never split? Don't ask me to explain the science behind this. I don't know, I just know that it works.

I learned that trick of all things from an electrician carpenter. I taught him that it's always nice when kids share their tips and tricks. There is smoke. If you've ever tried putting screws in the end of a piece of cedar, you know it snaps 99 out of 99 times. The fact that I just made four in a row means I can work miracles. This is the point where we can put some pressure on this wood and pull it forward. Well, the secret is that if you close the gap too quickly and too aggressively at the beginning. You will have all the wood in contact with each other, but you should be able to close it a little on each board until you reach the end.

That's one way to straighten the board. There is another way. I'll show you now. let's get all the straight ones out of the way just for demonstration purposes, we'll grab another hockey stick, oh that's a beauty, there's a nice gap down there, but halfway is fine, so let me put some screws in this, straighten it out. I'm going out and I'll come down and show you my other secret. Hit the crazy part here is the forest that comes and comes back and then curves, it's actually really fun, so what I have to do is widen it enough.

Now, to put this here, what is that, where I want it. Take care of it in each beam. So let's say, for example, you're not in the most trouble and you don't want to have to get hurt too much and you're not alone. Let's say you're building a deck and your lovely wife joins you and you need help closing the boards. Here's a great trick, our gap is only half an inch, it's not that dramatic, but you want to put that square 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 let's give it a little bit of a degree, a little bit of an angle, okay, now My force on the board is at the bottom of the wood when I pass it and it's as simple as putting that screw in the frame, there we go and use it as fulcrum, so I put my screw here. tighten my screw here, that's it, tighten my screw here now ladies, this is something amazing, you can do it all yourself because you can sit on top of your deck, take it off, set it up, it's a one-person operation and you can just lean on it with your hand, you can stick your shoulder into it, okay, and you close that gap until you're absolutely in love with it, put the screw in, don't release the pressure until you're done good and then release it and hopefully the The surface of your deck won't be as damaged and this will be a little tight, but it will come out.

You will find that when you do this, this screw will be buried in the wood and when you remove it, you will pull it out. Most likely it will come up like this, you don't want to leave this lying around, put that screw right there in the wood, 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 again, so remember the secret here is that the only curve you want to fix is ​​when it opens at the end, if you turn it around and it creates a rainbow in front of you, you've got it. the board upside down, flip the board because that is the easy way to manipulate the wood, trying to close the middle is always a real frustration and you will never get the ends spaced correctly, this way you are guaranteed to have a constant gap and you just need to have a little extra three foot piece of wood to help you do it so do it yourself, but it's a lot faster if it's a lot faster, it's a trick. -Trick you can do yourself, but it's a lot of fun if you have someone to help you, it makes deck work very quick even if your wood is lousy, so one last quick tip before I let you go and jump in this platform here. when you're screwing your wood into a piece of shit what it is, put your bit where you want it and then put your hand on the back of the drill, give it a good push down and I'll tell you why right there you have that perfect. a lot of control if you're going one handed and your drill ever comes off the screw because you're pushing so hard with one hand it's going to come off and make a big hole in your wood so you don't want that on your nice rig so in Instead of pushing really hard with one hand, you can just go and maintain contact between the bit and the screw with your left hand and then you won't have to push as hard and even if it slips, you can hold on, well, that's a great tip for beginners, just to make sure you're not going to drill a bunch of holes in the wood.

You'd be surprised how many times you just slide off that screw that's coated, so sometimes the stuffing, the head gets filled up with the coating and it's not pretty to think about until you start putting a lot of pressure on it and then it happens. disaster, we have the last two boards of the terrace left to continue here and, of course, the last one. one is written on all of your special detail cuts and we have an angle that we want to place under the edge of the window, so you'll see that when you cut your piece and you think you're ready to go, there's just no way to do it. put that there, that's why it doesn't screw a second of the last board.

Now you can use this technique when you are doing flooring of all types and also cut the board and lay it out so you have something to measure from. but then go back and install the other piece first and then you can go back and install this one because this is a lot, are you going to slide on the boom? No, it's a matter of screwing them. Come on, ready. No, I have one more trick for you, max. You remember we separated all of our boards, they're good and bad, so these are the bad and the ugly and we're going to start turning a screw here.

I'm going to show you a technique that you may not want to rely on now. this, but it's effective and it's that you take the screw at a significant angle to start with, okay, take the lever and before you screw it in lift it up and then measure what you're doing here, take about 1/4 of that screw. through the hole in the bottom until it contacts the way they now screw in at an angle that contacts that wood with a gap and we all know that when we tighten this, it will close the wood, ready to screw, magic, ok , so just to recap because We put our posts inside our frame, our frame is an inch and a half, so we included this and plus I want a one inch overhang, which is the actual thickness of a five-quarter board.

It's amazing how nothing has the same dimension as what it says on the package, you know? We're going to go like this and I've lined it up there too, nothing is as straight as it should be around here, but I think at the end of the day when we're done it's going to look nice and no one will know if there's a little bit of back and forth with it. skirt sticking out so I'm just using the fine to saw. This is actually a trick. This is my PVC plumbing saw, but it is very useful with software wood.

This is annoying, okay, that pretty much covers everything you need to know for tips and tricks for laying deck boards. Remember that spacing is important, but the most important thing is to be patient and be happy with each piece you install because it is very difficult to go back and fix. If you get irritated after the fact, it's later, that's okay, now is the time to move on to the handrails and stairs. Well, it's railing day. I'm really excited because I have about two hours to finish this job before I get swamped. A storm is approaching, so let's get to work.

We are going to place a horizontal rail kit. If you've never seen this before, it's actually very simple. We are going to use a top and bottom rail that comes pre-drilled. we're going to use cedar to match our deck and then of course we're going to have this top plate that we're going to install it on and we're going to leave a gap at the bottom so everything is nice and dry and then we're going to finish all of this off. with a decorative drink rim, we're going to put a five-quarter by six-inch board on top and that way we have a surface on top that we can screw on from the bottom, everything will be clean and shiny and we can sand it and polish it and May you have some beautiful years to come, we are going to finish this whole system up to the stairs and down, there are two steps to the normal landing and we will do it very gradually because we need visitors to reach the housethat is.

It's good to consider the fact that Grandma is only five feet tall and simply can't take high steps like she used to, so instead of using a nine and a half inch ladder, we'll use three steps here with a six inch one. Get up and it will be easy to build, we'll just use two by sixes and make a couple of boxes attached so no one will slip and voila we'll have a finished project, let's just go over the really simple process for installing these. and it's really simple, so you just need to know a couple of things before you start so you don't mess this up.

One thing we're going to know is this center post here, this is the anchor, this one is perfectly plumb. and my top rail is measured and installed, ready to receive the railing kit, so I'm exactly 49. Oh, we'll call it half, but it's the side half, okay 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 no matter what happens here when I screw all this together, this is going to be a basic law of mathematics, so let's double check this 49 and three eighths. let's call it now this kit will surprise you because it has end caps and these 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 actually use to screw them in the wood so you don't screw them through the end of the wood you are screwing through the folds and that will prevent the rail from breaking and rotting over time and they are undecorative.

They're going to match the caps that go here and that's cool, so what you have to do is take the two plates together, measure the thickness of both plates and it turns out it's half an inch, so I have to remove them. From my measurement remember that we were 49 and three eighths minus half, I am 48 and 7/8 well, yes, then we are going to cut two pieces 40 and 7/8, we will do the same process on the entire platform. measure from the bottom of the base and then cut two for each section and then we'll put it all together and then we'll glue them in place and mount it with the screws.

It's that simple, there's not a lot of brain work involved here, just make sure you're measuring the base and that's the number you'll use no matter what and everything else will fit and close square and plump. I'm going to have a very consistent spacing on both ends and if you want to know how to set up your post so you have a consistent spacing on both ends and you're not watching the entire series. Check out the first section on framing because we figured out how to get those posts in your frame in that section just to show you that we did it right.

I'm going to pretend this is all fucked up and see if it fits perfectly into the old place. I love it now, this particular rail is going to be about this tall, but before we install anything, I'm going to put all the axles on the top and bottom, screw them all together and then we'll drive it in and they're really giving us a lot of screws here, This is like two. inch screw I'm only putting in quarter inch material so it's a little 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 have seen my son Nate do it a bit. video about this type of process not too long ago last year, at some point and I think he was much better at it than I was yesterday, he had a real knack for gluing these things together very quickly. I'm going to have to go back and watch that video because this is frustrating. One of the benefits of this system, guys, is that you can go out and buy this piece of wood with all the holes already drilled and already configured to match the code of the space so you can't have kids falling down the gap, so it's very useful that way now, if you want to be one of those people, you want to be someone who makes your own gap size and drills your holes, go ahead, but for my money, I like get something that's already there pre-drilled, you have all our rails, get yourself a hitting block, it says cedar and they will hit it to fix the reins, if you hit it indirectly, it leaves all the wood with all kinds of lead ends, so that's a good way to distribute the weight, we have a stand attached here, yeah, which is good, yeah, nice and simple because we've already measured previously knowing the height of this and we were just looking for a little space under here, so I'll be able to try it after the rain, like this that now the height of this attached stand is the perfect job to set it 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 it a little bit more, maybe 3/8 because you know that when you tighten it, it will pull it good. The idea here is that you will have two screws in the back because that is where I want most of your strength, it is to keep it from falling off, this is the best part of the job, okay now look at this, I'm going to hug it nice and tight , yes, there we are going to balance, so at this point we are going to finish putting everything. of the structural screws and then we'll tie a couple of screws in from the top in 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 past it. your railing and you see space between the rails, so we'll tighten it up nice and then we can cut our five quarters at the top and screw that in from the bottom.

This is a perfect shelf for drinks, perfect height for standing. up there and relaxing and hanging out with your friends, okay, 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 because the railings are our finishing touch. This is where the details come in. play, everything else is basic carpentry, measuring, cutting and screwing, but when you get to the finishing touches on the railings, the things your hands come into contact with, everything has to be perfect, your sight lines, little things like this, so I've cut this. top plate we talked about, this is the five-quarter board because at the top of the rail the idea is to split the difference in space, it ends up being just about an inch on each side from the post to the corner, okay?

What you do here is you really want to smooth out 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 over to the circular saw and cut some corners, take our palm. The sander softens all of that up and then we're going to go up and screw this into place now because of the way your saw may or may not work, if it's sliding it's easy, you can cut in any direction you want, but because the board is So wide, I actually have a cut on the inside, so I'm going to turn 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 sand everything first. this with the palm before we place it, we'll just take our palm sander.

I'm using 220 grit sandpaper only because cedar is a soft wood and doesn't require a lot of energy and you can just burn the entire board for speed. I'll slow it down to half speed just to give myself a chance to get used to how fast it will run at these different impact levels. Depending on how dry the cedar is, sometimes you just have to learn through trial and error. You can see I can also get rid of any dirt coming from behind here by just smoothing out the edges, keep in mind that since we're going to use our hands on these we really want to make sure no one gets hurt, we just want to work until they're all gone. those marks, but be careful not to sand too much, that's why I have the speed on low and a nice smooth grain.

If you sand this too much after it gets wet in the next storm, you'll drop all the Carini and you won't be very happy with the result. You can see the slots here. Okay, you have these lines and then one. space, each of these is a different material, okay, so the lines are actually a much denser and stronger material, so when you're sanding, you're going to sand that soft spot and because of the different densities, you're actually causing a bit of a scoop, you don't even see it when it rains, all the waves are fine, so when you buy this directly from the store because it's wet cut, all those middle points are already raised and when it dries, it's going to shrink , so you might even find it necessary within a month, just before you go, apply the clear coat finish, come back with the palm sander and give it one more chance to get rid of the ridges, so this handrail It's nice, but This now, that's sexy.

When you're about to put this on, remember that I was talking about putting it on from the bottom. If I go in straight in, I'll come out over the top, even if I put it at an angle, look how aggressive my. The angle has to be and when you start putting things at an angle like that weird things happen to the wood it starts pulling and tends to want to bend and you can do that if you have to but I would suggest spending a few extra dollars and choosing a shorter screw, like 2 inches, because this one, even if I put that screw in directly from the bottom, okay, I'm getting enough grip there.

I'm going to be very happy with that, so what I'm going to do is time it a little bit more and I know I'll be fine, yeah, remember gravity is not your best friend here, all we're doing is locking it in. its place, yes, so give it a good chance. Pinch in with the thumbscrew at a little bit of an angle because when you get close to the top the size of the drill will come into contact with the railing, it will restrict your ability to drive that screw in, you could strip the head off and then you'll be there.

There's a lot of mess. and that's buried, so the last part of the railing system is when you're in one of these tight corners against a brick wall, it could be brick or vinyl or anything else, but what I would suggest. is instead of going with a four by four post and then putting other big four by four posts here and then just leaving a stupid little gap, go this way, you'll see this in houses all the time with handrails, you'll see this in the century Houses, whenever they have a porch, they always take one of their finished boards and lay this set down, put it in place and then attach it to the building because here we're going to have a set of stairs, we're going to put up the railing. and we want to have that triangle effect for strength because it's really not just for beauty, it's for safety, so if you go down the stairs and you clean yourself and you hold on to the railing like that, you know like it's me. m 200 pounds I've put 200 pounds of pressure on that railing, it has to hold me up so it doesn't wipe me out.

If you don't look at the house, you're really missing the force multiplier effect of that. triangle, so what do 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 drill a hole in the mortar joint to put their screws in, that's basically sand and if you put something in the mortar joint with sand and every time someone grabs a railing and moves a little , start removing all the sand before you know where you have a huge hole between the bricks, nothing is holding anything and you have lost all your strength and want to drill directly into the brick.

The best idea is to drill into the brick behind here so that the hole is covered from visibility from the outside and that's all you have to do now if you don't have a hammer drill, that's fine. This time I don't have a hammer drill. I'm going to use a regular drill to demonstrate just a VSR drill. You get the Tapcon screw kit at your local hardware store and you get the one with the bit. so you always have the right size drill bit, you won't be disappointed now without the hammer drill feature it just takes a little more time but is still very effective, see how long that hole is traditionally when the drill bit comes with the drill? screw the amount of meat in that screw is equal to the depth of the screw sorry the amount of meat in the bit is equal to the depth of the screw so if I drove that part of my drill into the wood like I do Did you know That when I put my screw in I have room to adjust the depth of the screw?

So this will be great. We just put our screw in here. Hey puppy, don't feel that, listen to that torque that doesn't work. anywhere and if you really want you can take some time to get some plastic that will fill that hole and then you will sand it all down later and make it invisible. Now I know what someone you're going to sink into, you're thinking. oh, we should drill all the way through until we have contact with the wall behind the brick, but keep this in mind, the brick is four inches deep, then there's an inch of space and plus it has an inch of wood, so now it's If you work with six inches and then you'll probably have a half-inch piece of OSB, if you go through that OSB, it's not going to be any stronger, especially since what we're looking for is the strength of this vertical movement here. no one will be able to rip that out of the wall, that's not the concern because our pole4x4 is right in the frame.

If it's a surface mount, maybe that's a concern and you may want to open the wall from the other side and lock it. and insert an 8 inch screw in there, but dear Lord, it's a lot of work to avoid having a throat post in the frame. It's very important when it comes time to make the skirting, you know what type you want to go with here. We are going to use a more solid skirt, we are looking for animal control because we don't get direct sun in this area, we are not as concerned about air passage, if you do get direct sun I would suggest using a skirt as a privacy lattice so you have a little bit of control of large animals and wind, but since we don't need that here, we're going to go with a nice, clean look and two recommendations up front many times when you buy this. skirt type, the end boards are at an angle, they are not cut square from the factory and I don't know why, so when you go to measure and cut your skirt, always make sure to trim it. first edge before you start and then you should be fine now if you remember the demolition demo video.

From the beginning, the wood that was on this platform was cedar just like what we are using now, but it was buried in the ground, etc. It's very important that you don't want your cedar to be in the organic matter, so when you measure leave an air space and when you finish this, if you want to finish the garden and you don't want to have an air space, go. and get some pebbles of clear stone or river stone and use them to build behind your gardens, against your terrace, if you want to close that animal trap, never again push your land against this thing that you are going to promote and then you are only going to shorten the useful life of your terrace lamps.

That works. They have a good space under here. I can put my hand under it. The other thing you want to think about is in terms of decoration. You don't want them to get together. that you want one to cover the other and I would always suggest that the place that you want to be prettier is the one that you want to put last, so this is our street view, so we'll put it last. I'm going to start here with this one, just line things up, make sure you're happy with the way it ends up, put your knee in there to press, grab a couple of screws and place this board, if possible, two inches from the edge. is a really good place to go, it will help promote no splitting and this whole row of boards you want to be the same height from the top so if you need to you can mark it out but I like to have a consistent line.

I'll cross it and look at each other. Now the same rule applies to the bottom board. Take a look at the entire length of the skirt. The board you are joining should be somewhat level. Take the highest reference about a half inch below that, it's nice and easy here again, putting this screw in flush with the wood, you don't want to bury it, okay, this is a screw that you'll want to be able to pull out if you ever need to access it. under your deck so if you bury it there's a little bit of a surge and then when you try to get it out you destroy your wood so this is a great way to start and then you'll be able to access under the deck if you ever want to get in there for some reason .

The reason we start at the outside corner with a full board is so that it's pretty pretty, it's important, which brings me to my next point. When you cut the board, you will have a clean side of the saw blade and a rough side, you will install the clean side facing out. We are looking for that consistency of two. inches down so just the last few finishing touches here start at the corner measure all the way down the middle and try to adjust the flooring to be consistent so all the boards are the same height you don't want to have to cut each board up and down just take a shovel and clean a feeder put this on consistently as you get close to the middle, stop, start at the other end with a full board and go towards the middle again.

I'll show you why if when you get to the one in the middle you have a space like this you don't want to cut a board to fit in that hole that is so unpleasant what you do is take the total amount of width of all these two boards plus the space and divide it by three and then cut three boards the same width, they're still all three here and that's going to make that space only take up probably 3/4 of an inch of this board, this port on this board and then you won't even notice. that the boards are different sizes and you won't get stuck with a little splinter at one end and don't forget to finish the entire skirt before you start building the stairs, one because it is very difficult to work behind the ladder and two if You put your skirt in this area to where the stairs are.

You have to close the side of the stairs to the ground or you will lose the ability to keep your bugs, so finish the whole skirt and then it will be time to look at everyone. Right now it's time for stairs and you have a couple of options available. Whenever you are working with black metal for your finishing work, you can always go to the hardware store and they will have pre-made black. metal stair risers for you and just screw the deck boards in from below, that's a workable system, but only if you have the same kind of height requirements as a traditional 8 inch step, so if it's a little different , you must do it. something custom then that won't be good for you, you can always buy the wooden ones that also come pre-made and you can shave the top and bottom a little bit, but remember the code in most places and what people are used to is that.

Each step has the same height, rise and length of travel, so if you start making modifications like that, you end up with very long, strangely shaped steps and the natural function of people going up and down stairs changes abruptly so that you can keep coming. walking down the stairs deep in conversation not paying attention and almost on top of you just because the heights are wrong, so what you want to do is make sure each step is exactly the same, plus or minus about a quarter of an inch in exterior applications. I'd even go plus or minus a half inch just to make life simpler.

Well, now our total height, including the platform itself, is around eighteen and a half. Well, then we'll make our stairs based on eighteen as a measurement just because there are a lot of unevenness. here and we have the ability to shimmy a little bit to get the height we want, so 18 divided by three is six, I hope so, and I cut my calculations earlier, so we want a rise of six inches, now two by six it's an inch and a half and the deck board is one that gives me six and a half and that's pretty close to what I want considering it's actually eighteen and a half and I did the math on eighteen so if I just made a box which I pre-cut here and then put deck boards on top of.

I end up with a gain of six and a half inches multiplied by two, all right, that's thirteen and eight, which is another six and a half below the step that will actually end up. Being perfect, it's fortunate that we got it that way and one of the reasons it is that way is because the house had the original stairs built there for two steps and therefore it was set up to be similar to going up and down, and that's how we did it. What we've done by 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 climb the steps in your house and you want to add a terrace, finish your terrace at the same height as your last step and you will be fine now too.

I'm thinking about the street when you look at my staircase because I'm making this whole cedar thing. I'm not going to finish it with any other surface board other than the top, so what I did was create a little bit of blocking. I'm just going to map this out to make some sense, okay, we can visualize this together and the back is actually inside the outer two, okay, so the only time you can see the joint is from the side of the building, not from the front, and you only see one joint and I closed it.

On that side, basically what's going to happen after that is we're going to put in a five quarter inch board that gives me a nice 10 inch step with a little bit of edge and then I'm going to have another box hill right here, you start to look at it. 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, lower the first one to the level and drop the second box. We will place a couple of screws in the skirt. to keep it all together and then we'll finish it all together, we'll give it a quick sanding and we can take our last post, place it inside the frame directly to the ground and attach it from the three frame pieces more. the handrail and that will actually make these stairs part of the deck and support the top rails here with that triangle effect that we're looking for.

Remember when you are building something outside, just look at the end from the beginning. Take some time to write it down. Think about it and you'll be fine - it's not that hard to build box stairs, it's the easiest way to do it, it also requires a little more material, so if you want to cut stringers we have a video in our video series. in our latest tech project to show you how to do it, but this is quick and simple, the math is easy, and it's one of my favorite ways to put together a quick set of stairs, so I try to keep homeowners 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 assembly and all that kind of stuff with the proper rear exterior fasteners, but to be totally honest, I know that most people don't have access to those kinds of tools and why should you know? How often in your life are you going to frame a deck now when you put up your box before you finish the frame and put up your post? you just want to make sure you mark your level right, so before we go any further, we've got a frame behind it, we've attached our skirt, so we used three inch screws to tie down, we'll drop five or six in there. just to be safe, make sure we have at least four or 500 pounds of this shear strength on those screws and then we'll remove this level and we also want to make sure that we're not just level from left to right.

Front to back we don't want to be level here we want to have our stairs just the back a little bit down remember it's always a lot more comfortable if you're going up stairs if you lean forward a little bit more because that's the direction you go. you are heading, the back is too high, you are out of level, you feel thrown down the stairs and it is dangerous, so it is always best to only have a 1 degree slope towards the building that is my ATS lathe my line of level is fine now what I'm looking for is square so by putting my level on both posts there is no way for it to contact the entire side of the post on both posts unless it is relatively square and that position is actually really perfect again, very nice and since it's all closed even if it's a little outside it won't matter.

I just want to make sure that when I place my railing on all my woods they will line up and not open up or in case I have a turn my box remembers that if it runs a little crooked while you're building, placing the stairs a little out of square can Help you solve the problem of making the sugar and wood of the railings well. and tight, the post is already placed in the base. We know that it is very good to place a screw in the bottom corner. Now what I want to do is use my line of sight and line up this pole with the other one so that it's plumb.

I don't want to depend on anything but my eyes here because this post will be judged by that post and if that one comes out a little after everything we've done here, if this one comes out the same amount, it will totally show you why I'm doing this for the same reason we did on the platform with our post, so now I don't trust the screws. If someone pulls on the rail this way, I actually have blockages, so I'm multiplying the number of contact points the screws have and making it very difficult to separate the wood.

I dare say you won't find anyone who can just walk in and rip this thing apart, they're going to need some serious tools so now this post is built into the frame the frame is attached to the platform frame and that's actually very solid when you put the railing there will be an invincible testament to the guy who originally laid these papers, you don't see this very often but I built my look directly on these pavers and I have these two posts cut to exactly the same length and they are placed on the paver inside the box, I screwed them in, look at that guys, if you start leveling, you build level, so once I have I'll cut my tracking piece.

I'll bring her here. I'll line up my holes.I'm going to look at that just for posterity and I'm going to bring that mark. No, this is my butt coming off the rail. Okay, I'm going to align. that up like this and I'm going to extend that trace line and you can see it's actually going to make some sense so that's where it goes okay, you see how my line is perpendicular if it were an elevator that's straight in the air that hole will be directly above that hole, the gap remains constant now, that makes a little more sense there, so we'll cut it at the same angle.

Yeah, I think we have something we're talking about now, so 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 of the second one box is not aligned in the same place with the first box, so when I'm putting my screws in, all my screws will still go all the way up, just a thought because people see the heads of the screws, so it should be considered part of the element of design or will be very noticeable and, of course, as with any soft wood.

The wood when you get close to the edges the boards don't close well so we just lift this end up and then we start screwing at an angle and now it's contacting the wood with a gap and we watch it close, there we go, like this that I made my entire box the same. I cut all the floor boards first and I'm lining them up, so when I'm building this and I have to work, I have to do a little puzzle where I can place my 2x4 here and make sure all my boards are Before correcting Martha, I'll just we have this here.

What we're going to do now is demonstrate a simple railing system that is attractive and forgiving, which is important, it's also incredibly strong, so what we have are our four by four posts. Remember our rule, as long as we install things really strong at the base and relatively plumb, we can manipulate the top to close, so we always cut the bottom on top of our rails the same way, even on stairs, no acquire that habit. from trying to trace the top rail and cut it separately just cut the bottom invert the board follow the line trace it like this so we do the same well we drop it we trace it I already have my measurement now I go nose and nose to get my measurement well because it is great angle to work with, easy to work with and then I'm taking off that half inch for the depth of our caps.

Okay, now I have that table and you can see. that my pieces are different. I lined up the holes. I rolled them up. I traced the bottom line along the top floor and then cut it. Now I have my bottom up. You can check again. Put them there. They should be pretty straight if they're not don't worry we still have that forgiving effect of screwing it all together now, what you want to do is screw on your end capsule now for the bottom rail. I suggest going flush on the top and with the top rail, make sure it's not glued higher because you're still going to put it with a two by four across this so make sure it's no more than flush , once you've screwed them all in, we can assemble the really is that you can see that this cap is very forgiving when putting it at a screwing angle, it will still sink in flush, so you weren't going to have any problems with that.

The ideas that are trying to make that screw long enough to operate even at 40 years from now when the deck is completely rotted out these screws will still hold onto something is a bit overkill but overdoing it is not a concept. so bad, so to assemble the bottom rail, although we used the tips to rest it. To set the angle, lift it up about an inch, pull it out less. It would contact your platform, the longer it will last. Insert the screw there. Set this and remove the spin. These are amazing. Now listen. Let's go through this again these come set up for a traditional 42 inch railing system, which is great if you're building something to code so someone doesn't fall off the stairs and fall to their ultimate death, but what we're talking about is doing is simply creating a safety rail for grandma to come over. to go home and visit her and she's not that tall, so what we did was take the top off of her and I ran it through the saw.

This is just aluminum and it's powder coated, so boom, we cut it so that when grandmas climb up this railing, she's not completely above her head, that's obviously 42 inches, that's tough. Most older people do not have much shoulder strength and use their biceps and triceps muscles when climbing a railing, and so on when climbing. We're putting in safety rails and bathrooms, they're usually pretty low so they can have their arms straight against their body and they can grab something like this, it's okay, if your railing is like this, even if she holds on to it and slips. , will release it. she doesn't have the strength to support her body weight if she slides at that partial angle, so make sure that when you have a railing and you're thinking about older people, cut it if she has the opportunity, if she doesn't. make it wider and put a second railing for them we just drop this bad boy in here one at a time there's really no rhyme or reason to this it feels really sloppy and stupid but when you get to a point where you're happy just beat it out until everything fits tight and twist it all into place start at the top line it up in the middle tighten the screw and lower it press down on the top row here we go I'll help you get it out good. and tight and then do the same thing at the bottom, put it into position, well, I can't find that happy place here we go once again deaf here we go down on the angle so we have our entire railing system set at 31 and a half degrees, so to make the top plate, the first thing you want to do is cut a 31 and a half degree end, so what you want to do is come down close here.

I got a strange look on the line of your face. up and then mark it when you come back, line it up with your 31 and 1/2 degrees because it's going to be exactly the same, and this point here and this point here should be the same as the bottom if you're a mark. on the pencil is wrong, go with the longest part of your brand and then we'll check again because if you cut it too long it won't fit into place and it won't, but it's okay because I can cut it shorter. I'm not going to cut it even more the second time, it makes sense, there's no daylight there, that's perfect, I love it, so what I'm going to do is just create color by color here and here, relatively speaking, I'm going to trace this, oh, that was it. very well done, it was really good to see how many, why would I give four, three hands?

Okay, I'm going to do the same thing on the other side, color to color, so in a perfect world this is supposed to be a little bit higher, but this is why the system is forgiving because we're using a five-quarter board. to cover all of this up, so I've got an inch over the long overhang and as you can see here, it extends so far beyond the post that there's no traditional line of sight where you can see it. I can see if there are little gaps or anything around it, so it's really forgiving for young woodworkers like me.

This is the part of the job where I really piss off the security trolls. Oh yeah, I'm using my saw without a pair of glasses. because I wish I could see what I'm doing when I do crazy things like this now I'm going to line up my cut I'm holding my safety sword my guard out of the way line this up and I'm going to go and much better and from the other side and the other angle oh if you're like I'm auditioning for America's Got Talent look at that, I get a golden buzzer there we go ladies and gentlemen of the jury remember I want to line this up so I don't drill any hardware on the railing that goes down the middle three points just so it doesn't leans over me my battery is starting to run down a little.

Get this little torque really perfect. I'm going to take an extra step. I'll put it directly in the post. It helps align everything well. It's not really necessary, but I usually put a screw in the side to tie it to this post. Also, but I'm noticing that my two by four has a natural crack. Throw a screw in it, it'll just make it split, so I'll leave it alone. Here is my top plate. I need my angle to be 31 and a half degrees if I measure like this, I'm actually going to have something much longer, so if you want to measure this one the way you do it, you flip it over and put it face up.

Now you're measuring from top to top, okay? come on now we put our 45 up a bit as far as the rail districts go, often look mom without a map, same thing now, if it doesn't grab on very well and close that gap the first time, just back off the screw and tighten again , when the grandmothers come, let them know that this is everything for them. You can make the most of this, so thanks for joining us in our series on how to restore a deck you thought was hopeless. We have many projects. on our cool playlists for you, so if you're a DIY home renovation type guru and want to get your hands dirty and spruce up your house, join us on that playlist because we can show you how to spruce up your basements. bathrooms your kitchens anything that's in your house we have a video for you now this video will have a little more labels at the end because Max will demonstrate how he seals this deck in a few weeks from now and he will label that's at the end of the video, so stay tuned because it's a great system.

It seals it, prevents water from penetrating the wood and prevents it from working properly, so it requires little maintenance. This is the lowest maintenance program you can find. You can get it, so forget about spending all your money on all that fancy baking, you'll get a real number, figure out how to seal it and you'll be very happy with the result. Now listen if you haven't subscribed to our channel before. so press the button in the corner and if you liked it, give us a thumbs up. We need this feedback to know what to bring you in the future.

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