Two years ago someone pointed out how crappy our deck railings were . Being that we don't have kids and don't have enough people over hanging out on the deck, we ignored the complaint and went about our way.

It's true the railings were/are crappy, but so's the whole deck. The planks go in different directions, there's only a single rim joist around the perimeter and it's inadequately supported. That doesn't mean the entire thing is unsafe, but the railings were definitely iffy.

When we decided to have new windows put in, we knew the railing would interfere and have to be removed. What better time/excuse to replace the whole thing?

The first section to go was of course near the window . Since the windows were being replaced while I was away on business, I had to do this part before I left. That was the middle of June. Now it's August if that provides any kind of time line for you. 

Before we tore it all down, we had to decide what to replace it with, so Jen and I headed to Home Depot .

They make prefab deck railing units, that seemed like the way to go. They would be quick and easy and that's perfect for all the projects we already have going this summer. Unfortunately the prefab stuff was more expensive then the stuff we could make ourselves, so we bought all that we needed to put up newer version of what we had - lattice style railings.

Once home, doing the math and looking at our old lattice style setup, Jen decided she didn't want lattice and the prefab was worth it for the price. So I took everything back, returned it and went to buy the prefab.

Now the problem with any kind of lumber purchase is you have to sort through the pile looking for the best pieces. If I'm going to spend $15 on a piece of lattice, it better well be the best piece of lattice they have. As for the prefab deck rails, they had 10, we needed 11, and only 4 were acceptable quality. I called Jen, gave her the bad news, and decided on making it ourselves, though not lattice style.

The point of this project is to make the railing safe, but keep everything cheap. We'd like/need to redo the entire deck, but not now. It's too expensive and there are higher priorities. 

The second reason for the rail wobble is that there's only one rim joist and it's soft. The rim joist should be at least doubled. It should be two 2"x6"s sandwiched together to form a 4"x6" beam - at least. With only a single 2"x6" over time the board will get soft, warp, etc., so no matter how flush my rail post or how tight it is to the joist, the joist itself will flex giving the new posts/railing a wobble .

Unfortunately I can't just add a second board to the rim joist. It's one of those things that would require a complete reconstruction, or at the very least, tearing out all the lattice underneath, scabbing in an additional 2"x6" and putting new lattice back.

At the time of this picture, I thought my little plate on the backside would suffice, but it did not. I've since come up with a new plan, you'll see later. 

And here is an example of how screwed up things are with the deck . These 4"x4" beams are going every which way, but aren't actually connected to the deck. The deck surface is all at the same level, but the beams underneath are not.

The only double board joist is cut to nearly nothing where it attaches to the house to clear the dryer vent.

The issues go on and on. I just hope it holds until we can replace all of it.   

Once the posts are up, they get connected. It took me a while to figure out how I was going to do this. At first I thought I'd use little metal brackets and nail the whole thing together. Considering the number of nails, I looked into getting a nail gun. When the guy at the store gave me a hard time about galvanized, blah, blah, blah building codes, I decided to ask my cousin Gus. He does this sort of thing for a living.

Sure enough Gus had all kinds of good ideas. First was to forget nails and use screws - predrill and counter sink them. Also use the good screws. There's some high quality screws out there that make the project easier and stronger over time.

He was right on all accounts. At first I thought the predrill/counter sink idea was silly. It's only a deck. What's the difference? Boy was I wrong. The first couple of screws you see here went in awful and split the wood. From here out, I did what I supposed to and things worked a lot better. As far as the screws go, get the nicer ones. It's totally worth your time and money. I bought some of the generic ones to fill in a couple of places. Every time I use one, I just end up making a mess and cussing up a storm.  

Gus also stressed the importance of having a tight fit for your railing cap . I'm hoping six clamps was enough to qualify for tight. Considering how warped most of the boards are, I thought about going out and getting more clamps. I mean, when can you have too many clamps?