railings

No, not that kind of railings. Well, maybe a little 🙂

I took some vacation time from my job this week, so I could work on the house. The railing system arrived a week ago, and someone needed to install it. Everyone on the construction team is feverishly working towards the “rough-in inspection”, which should be happening within 10 days, so I nominated myself to do a bit of construction work. Also, these rails are through-bolted into the house, so if there are any water leaks around them, I only have myself to blame. I think Bob was happy to let me do the job.

First of all, you should know that steel is heavy. Lugging all the parts up to the four different decks took effort. I also got a first-hand view of how important it is to be organized. Tony & I measured size and counted the of bolts we would require TWICE, yet I still had to make a three trips to the hardware store to exchange bolts and return extra washers. All of the hardware is 5/8” galvanized steel, which we chose because it holds a paint finish well.

The roof deck post mounts are attached with 9” bolts, right through a beam (top photo). This area is at risk of leaking the most, so I put Sikaflex goo in all the holes, around the bottom of the mounts, under and over the washers, and under the bolt heads. I’m enjoying doing this.

The 3rd floor deck posts are side-mounted, again bolted right through a big beam. Tony was great to work with — much easier with 2 guys. You can see the nuts on the inside of the flashing in the picture above, also carefully covered in Sikaflex. The right-hand picture shows a deck on the second floor, with 4-1/2” concrete bolts drilled right into the front concrete wall. These rails are amazingly rigid, they don’t move at all when I tug on them.

Then of course we get to paint everything, including the new spiral stair. Nancy and I invested our whole weekend in this project. It took a full day to touch up the primer on all the rail posts, and prime all 140 or so nuts and bolts and washers. Today we started on the bronze enamel finish coats.

Working up on a scaffolding is a bit scary. We’re logging a lot of time there.