Back Porch Project: Railing Choices

 Since we’ve taken on this project I started noticing other peoples’ homes and how their porches are built. There are so many kinds and styles of railings for porches, decks, and outdoor stairways. My conclusion is that there’s no right or wrong – anything goes!

Of material, we rejected PVC and composite early on, even though composite seems to be the option sellers are promoting. That left wood or metal. Newly popular on homes being built around here now, is horizontal cables between the porch posts instead of balusters. The new home down the street has them, but within several weeks after the new owners moved, many of the cables were stretched out and sagging badly. Metal balusters look nice, but they’re more expensive. Being aluminum, they don’t appear to be very sturdy. When we looked at what Home Depot had in stock, every single package or pre-made section had at least one bent or smashed one. Steel are available too, but these are special order at a higher cost than aluminum.

So wood it was.

Next style choice: posts on top of the floor or attached to the side of the framing? From observing other porches and staircases, both are common. With the posts on top of the floor, the balusters are set between the rails. When the posts are attached to the side of the floor deck, the balusters are on the side as well. I left those decisions to Dan since he’s doing the constructing. 

Posts. We could get ready made posts at the precut 4-foot height for $18 each. Or we could get 8-foot 4×4 posts for $10 each, and cut them in half ourselves to make two porch posts per ten bucks. Any guesses which we chose?

For the staircase railings they sold kits, which we did get. I do think they were heavily overpriced and that the DIYer could easily make the stair balusters themselves. 

The problem with all of the above is finding good instructions. They show you what they offer but not how to actually construct it. The instructional flyers and handouts were poorly written, and most of the instructions at websites are more sales pitches than usable information. So as Dan has begun the railing phase of the project, he’s pretty much figuring it out as he goes along.

Next time I’ll have photos of his progress.