Stair Skirt Board Installation Master Class An In Depth Guide

All right, guys. So now let's talk about coffered ceiling layout and blocking. This is a little bit more of a boring step, but it is absolutely crucial. Good carpenters realize whenever there is a mistake that can be made that is very hard to come back from. This is a point in the process, it's a lot different than cutting a board, where if you cut it wrong, you can just go get a new board and cut another one. Layout is very important because if you get your layout an inch off and you start blowing through it, it's very hard to come back from. So we wanna make sure we get the layout right. As you'll see behind me, I've actually already got some of the blocking installed. Now, whenever you do your layout, it's very simple. We're gonna be dividing this whole section into equal spaces. Now, this is an end profile of the beam that we're gonna end up with. It consists of a one by six on the bottom and two one-bys on the sides. That means it's a seven-inch wide beam. To do your layout, it's very simple. You're just gonna shoot your laser tape the total distance and subtract 14 inches for two seven-inch beams, and then divide that by three, and that's gonna be your space in between beams. Here we are up on top of my scaffolding. And as you can see, I've already got the layout started here to make it a little bit easier to visualize. Now, as I said before, to figure our spacing, we'll just take the total distance minus 14 and divide it by three. So you can see here, I made my marks right there. Those are the sides of the beams, sides of the beams, and then that one-by-six is the inside of the beam. So whenever this is assembled, we'll have a beam going over the top that looks something like that. So the first place I like to start is to go around the whole perimeter and install my blocking all the way around. From there, we'll start chalking lines. To do that, I just take my square, I put it up on the ceiling like so and get a pencil line. And then I like to use this chalk line, the Shinwa chalk line. It's got that nice little point. You can stick it right up into the drywall and it makes it easy to chalk lines all the way across. Now, with this style coffered ceiling, our bottom one-by-six, which will be on the flat, has to be installed first all the way across. So we will just have one one-by-six and a grid, and that's the way it has to be done to have a flush intersection right here. So that's gotta be done first, which means our blocking, which I have right there, needs to come down and be exactly equal with my laser beam right here. So whenever I'm ready to start making this blocking, the first thing I do is I come to my beam intersections where I want to install this blocking, and I use my tape and my laser, and you'll see there at the seven-inch mark, I can take my measurements and see how deep down my blocking needs to be. So I'll have a section here and over there. I've taken the measurement already, and these are pre-cut right there. However, before I install those, I'm actually going to go ahead and take my measurement a little bit further over here. That way, I don't accidentally block my laser beam by installing these two first. Guys, just some quick thoughts on the interior blocking of your coffered ceilings. I'm all about keeping it simple. So a couple of general guidelines. I like to use material that is nice and crisply milled, that's going to be straight and flat and easy to work with. Generally for me, that means I'm either going to be using one-by poplar material that's already on the job site or ripping plywood down. In this case, I have a combination of CDX plywood and a one-by-six on top. Why? Well, I had this sheet of CDX plywood in my shop I've been wanting to get rid of, so it was going to be perfect for this blocking. And then I like a one-by-six on top simply because it's already the width that I need. It's already five and a half inches wide, means I'm not taking extra steps to rip anything on the table saw. It's going to be strong, straight, flat, easy to install. Keep it simple and it'll work really well. All right, so blocking is installed and just giving you a peek at what this looks like all finished up. First thing I did was I figured out where my joists were and I wanted to install my blocking so that it was perpendicular to the joists. And by doing that, I was able to screw into three different joists on all of these. So we have a very, very solid connection. You could hang an elephant from this blocking. It's very, very strong. So you can look at it with a lot of confidence. Now from here, also again, laser line there, you'll notice how it's even on all of my blocks all the way around. And then it's even on the bottom of this blocking here. Over here on this one, I put the blocking up and I actually had to rip it at an angle a little bit because we had some funky stuff going on. But you want to do that because the next step is to install these one by sixes on the bottom. And we want that to be as perfect as possible. From here, as we start putting in the bottom piece of our beams, these can actually be run across. If you want to run your first pieces across, or we could also run the one by six this way. So you've got options depending on how you want to do it. It doesn't really matter because they're all going to end up being flush anyways. Now we're going to be needing another set of hands to install this really long board. We just need something to hold one end while we work the other end. So a couple of different things you can do. I'm just going to take a scrap here. I'm going to mark where the bottom of this board is. Now I always carry a couple of small finish nails. I could just tack two finish nails in here. That would work. I could also take a scrap piece and just nail it with a couple brads. It's going to hold it in place. And then I can just literally pop that right off after I'm done with it. Okay, you'll be able to watch. Work smarter, not harder. Just going to lift this end to place so that it slips right over the edge of the other board. So now it's basically weightless on that end. And I can easily flex this down and pop it into place over here on the other end. I'll carefully align my edges so that my one by six is flush with the blocking on the backside here. And I'm going to just tack it with a couple 18 gauge brad nails. And then we'll use pocket hole screws to get a really solid connection into that band board. Now I'll flip you around again and we'll work our way down this board to the other end. And I just want to align this with the edges of my blocking ensuring that everything is looking good as I work my way down. I want to make sure that I don't put any nails in the area where the next one by six is going to intersect right here because I'm going to be putting biscuits in there and I don't want to be hitting nails with my biscuit joiner. Now it's not a hundred percent necessary to pocket hole screw this board to the band board but what it's actually going to do is it's going to ensure that whenever I'm putting the rest of these pieces and the crown in, it's not going to allow this to separate this joint here. So a little hard to see there but I got three pocket hole screws just makes things a little bit easier down the road. If I've got things fitting too tight it ensures that that won't separate. At this point, we've got the two long boards going through here and now it's time to do the intermediate boards. So I'm continuing to pocket hole screw these connections to the rim board. And then up above me here, I've got two number 10 biscuits with glue and a pinch dog. So getting ready to install the other two pieces on the opposite side. You can see the top here, three pocket hole screws. And then another key note is that this is back beveled. And what that does is we will put our biscuit end in first and then tilt this upwards. So having a back bevel on that cut right there helps it go into place. And then let me just give you a shot right here. Those are number 10 biscuit slots. You will also notice I plumbed down from my chalk lines right here onto my blocking and then added another piece of one by six blocking there. That'll come in handier later whenever we're installing the side beams. But just installed that. So it's just slightly above the one by six here and then marked my spots for biscuits here also. And then used the good old cordless Makita biscuit joiner to slot those in place. Okay, biscuits, two number 10s all glued up. Don't want a ton of glue on this joint, a nice even layer, but not too thick because keep in mind the more glue that you have in there, the more pressure it takes to make it all squeeze out. And one of the keys to make this joint invisible after paint is to have a tight wood to wood connection. So we don't want to have a gap in there that's just filled with glue. So now as you see, I'm trying to rock this up into place. If you had a square cut on the end of this, it would be really hard to push it into place. Just a five degree back bevel on here makes it a lot easier to push that up tight and get a really good connection. That's looking really good, nice and tight. I'm gonna go ahead and tack a couple of nails in this end. We'll add our pocket hole screws in a second. The only reason I did that is because I don't want it to fall down whenever I put a pinch dog here on this connection. Here we go. If you cut it nice, the pinch dog doesn't really have to do much as long as you don't over glue it. So that's nice and tight, that'll sand up nicely. And then over here, also nice and tight. And then we've got three pocket hole screws up above there tying this joint together really well. That way we know it's not gonna push apart later as we add more wood up here. So now at this point, we're in our center section. And the question is, how are we going to install this board? Because we need a strong glue joint and preferably some kind of a tenon connection up here so that we never get a hairline crack in the paint and the two boards become one. So it's pretty simple. On one end, we're gonna go with our two standard number 10 biscuit slots. So the first thing we'll do is put that end in. Now on this other end, I've again, I've cut this at a five degree bevel. That way we will be able to rock it up into place. But the question is then, how are you going to get your biscuits in there? So I have also done this with pocket hole screws in the past. My preference is still just to use biscuits. But what you do then is instead of just running your standard biscuit slot, you'll actually plunge it and then you'll run it all the way through on the end. So then once we put this board up into place, we'll glue it really well, put it up into place and then we'll actually take our biscuits and slide them in from the sides because I've got the slot run through on this board as well as the board up here. All right, that's pressure fit into place now and I've got plenty of glue in the slot. So I'll glue up a biscuit here and we will go ahead and just push that in from the outside edges here. That'll give a nice strong tenon connection and it'll help ensure that that joint stays together forever and never cracks. I'm gonna go ahead and lightly put in a pinch dog just for some clamping pressure. Here's a closer look at that through slot. As you can see right there, you can just take a biscuit, put it in and then just slide it right into that joint with some glue. That's a great way to tackle that problem. All right, so now that we've got that joint in place,