Tips for Installing Front Steps

0:01 okay guys we're out here this morning and free early kind of humid this morning but uh we're going to be taking these old steps off our house we've got new ones to put on something we've been wanting to do for over a year now these are getting in pretty bad shape this is kind of what it looks like he's coming out was afraid of just pick them up and get them off yeah well these year wasn't it that's what happens with stuff rots in South Mississippi and South Mississippi that's the humidity for you

1:07 this is treated lumber with treated deck screws and everything is not supposed to rust no y'all that don't work of course you have to realize these steps has been here since 2003 so they've been here pretty good while there's no sense in us taking the steps all the pieces to get them off the house because we're in a you know we kind of get it trying to get this done pretty quick we're just undoing the screws off of the risers here [Music]

2:08 we've got our trance here pre-cut for the house one of the things we learned um but the steps we just took off of the house here because we live in such a hot humid wet environment that other lumber just will not hold up even though it's treated it will not hold up on these conditions we went back with ease here and we decided to use a good heavy based oil paint on them to maybe help keep them from absorbing too much water being up under the steps where they can't get any air they'll come in here and they'll sit just like this and what we've done is I will show you something here reason

2:55 with having so much trouble taking the steps off the previous screws are these just Phillips head screws they're you know you're just a pain in the butt we've gone back we're going to be using a Torx head screw this Torx head is a little bit different more modern screw we're going to see if we can't get a little bit better job out of the Torx than we do the Phillips heads [Music] now we're putting the screws on the inside of the outside runners here and treads because we don't want to see the screw heads from the outside for aesthetic reasons [Music]

4:06 what we've got here this is what's called window wrap tape it's what you put around windows on a house whenever you're building them of the thing that we've learned about our other boards sitting on the concrete is the concrete stays wet up underneath the steps so what we're going to do is we're going to slide some pieces of this rubber tape with the aluminum foil part up up underneath this so that the water from the concrete does not wake up into the bottoms of our lumber and rot the bottoms of it there now we're going to try to get just enough slack to see maybe we can scoot it up under there now we don't want it sticking too far out the front just once we get this in here it'll be permanent it guys one of the

4:52 next things I want to do is I want to take months for framing square because we want to make sure we get our steps started off square with the house so I'll run it against the sill on the house out here on my first board I want to make sure that it's good and square to the foundation of the house we don't want to start off crooked so we've got a good square and I've done that on each one of these I've come down through here to make sure I have them every one good and square because the first board you put on will determine everything so we want to make sure we start all right ok guys as with any remodeling job at all we've come into a situation here the cliff slab is broken because there's a root from the tree over here grown under

5:39 the slab through here and what it's done is it has raised the slab up right here and as a result this tread right here is high so what we've got to do now is we put the level we put our board across here our riser and we've leveled it and we've determined we've got to cut a quarter of an inch off the bottom of this one in order to get everything back down to where the boards will touch all the other ones and get them level so we've got to take this one back off cut the bottom off a quarter of an inch and put it back on it's just one of those things about remodeling that you run into don't ever think anything's gonna be as easy as it looks like it is [Music]

6:33 okay guys this is our risers or risers or whites here on the house and the riser on the very top one is the first one that we want to put in because it is how we will level the steps across we're going to make sure that we have an even measurement on each end from the end of the hour stair treads so that we make sure we get started off right because what happens is these dare treads may be warped or crooked so we want to start at the top and work our way to the bottom that way we can straighten them if we need to okay we're going to make sure our riser is flush with the top of our stair tread right here so that we don't have a gap underneath it because

7:18 if there's a gap at the bottom that doesn't matter because the tread is going to cover it up we just want to make sure and you don't want to get too close to the top of this with a screw because you'll bust this right here a lot of times so you want to stay down about an inch and a half plummet for your first screw okay guys one of the things we want to mention y'all about any time you put boards down on the deck steps porch whatever look at the greens in the wood here you see how these grains are arched over this away this is always the top if you leave you put this up like this when water gets in this and soaks in it will automatically shed it if you turn this board over like that right there when water gets in here it

8:07 will cup and hold in these grains right in here and this will cause your wood to write a whole lot faster than it normally would this is nature's way of shedding water so when you put it on make sure you always put your boards down with the grains running this away in it rather than the other way we wouldn't put all three of our boards on here we're going to make sure we've got a one inch overhang right here that's what I want all my treads is a one inch overhang now sometimes you may have to rip this backboard just a little bit to get that one inch overhang right here on this very first one and then we want to make sure our overhang on the ends is right we'll make sure our tread is close with our riser now while these boys are still

8:54 going to be warped or cooked or something like that but that's one of the things you have to do when you're screwing them down once we get this one in here we're going to work our way down and try to get these steps screwed off good and solid before we move on to the next one it really doesn't matter when we get to this point right here which one of these you screw down first unless they have a lot of bad bows in them now we're going to start with a very back one because we're going to try to keep it flush up against the front here now I will show you a way that you can straighten these up I think I'll do that as we're shooting this we're going to take these two back off now that we know we've got the 1 inch overhang we're going to start back here and I'm going to show you how to straighten these as we go this it's got just a little bit of a gap back here so what we're going to do is put a screw in here salsa nailing

9:50 and that closes that gap up right there and helps to straighten the board up plus it pulls it down we'll put our screws in the top [Music] you want to run them down just a little bit below flush at the top you don't want just sink them where deep down in the longest [Music]

11:11 the steps are looking great then he did a good job so I've got them painted we've got a string here to keep you from walking on for a day or two and we're going to move into the kitchen with this and start painting in the kitchen thank you from Deep South homestead