completed with railing

The Backstory

This building was built 20 years ago with the intention of a deck accessed by a second story french door.

The Concept

The time had come to build it! I designed it with standoffs to keep the ledger and braces off the existing wood to prevent creating a rot situation or the need to cut into the siding and weave in some flashing. I didn’t find any hardware specifically made to space the ledger off the building so I used post bases and cut off the tabs. Also unusual about this design is that I eliminated a carrying beam by using 4 braces to support the 11 foot span. My motive was to keep the floor framing light weight and to spread the weight out over 4 points instead of 2 where the braces pushed inward on the log wall and header. Since I didn’t build the log home, it was not clear how well the header was connected to the surrounding logs. After pre-installing the standoffs to the back of the ledger I used 5 1/2″ ledger screws to attach it to the building. I built the braces with 45º angles, glued and screwed together including a ledger screw in each.

The Railing

The two railing posts in the center needed a little extra resistance to being pushed outward so I installed some 4X4 blocks that fit against the braces. This allowed 8″ of attachment instead of just 4 1/2″. The railing cap board is mitered and the joint is glued and screwed with the Kreg Jig as used in this post.

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