Decking project 7 looks at cutting in the deckboards around the newels for the balustrades. Take care with measurements and calculate where your newels will be in relation to the deck boards. Far easier to cut two slots out of adjoining deckboards than to have to cut a central rectangle out of the middle of a deck board!
One aspect of building a deck is fraught with problems fore the inexperienced DIY person. How to cut the holes in the deck where the newels poke through.
Easiest way is to have the newels and handrail balustrades right on the edge of the deck, but this is not always possible or practicable.
It will nearly always involve the cutting in of the deckboards around the balustrade newel support posts. It will help greatly if you ensure that you purchase newel posts which are perfectly 'square' and not wrongly machined.
The image shows a neatly finished cut
around a newel post, where care had been taken earlier in
the construction to ensure that the newel was positioned
between two decking boards. This is much easier than
cutting a slot hole out of a single deckboard.
The easy
way to do this is to leave the fixing of the newel posts
until decking is well under way. This will allow for the
position to be as in the image in most instances.
Where the newel has to be fixed at a deck corner, this
type of operation is not always possible.
The deckboards in this case were
laid with a 'waste' overhang. This is often the case where
for instance, deck dimensions do not match up with the
different lengths of deck board available.
Don't be
tempted to try staggering the lengths in order to minimise
wastage. Visual satisfaction is important. Allow for at
least 10% wastage of decking materials in your cost
estimates. 10% wastage is more or less the accepted norm
when buying anything other than expensive hardwood boards.
The decking project more or less finished with a view of
the balustrades over well laid decking.
Where the decking runs along the length of
balustrading, it is often desirable to lay your first
board flush against the newels and then 'notch' the outer
board to take it into the newel.
Any adjustments can be
remedied later in the decking process where the deck
finishes against a wall. If it is a free standing deck,
then carefully allow for working around the newels at the
design stage. Bear in mind the 'finished' - nominal -
width of the deckboards rather than simply measuring the
actual width of the board.
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