DIY Loft Guardrail

By Larry Walton

Building a Loft Guardrail

If you want to know if there’s a loft in a building (be it a barn, house or condo), just follow a kid. Kids just love loft areas, which is all the more reason to make them safe.

Lofts can be very cool design features that add interest to interiors and take advantage of otherwise wasted space. A loft is often created where you have a structure within a structure, the most common being a large open room with a vaulted ceiling adjacent to an interior space that has a lower flat ceiling, which creates the floor for the loft.

Determine the location of the floor opening for the newel post tenon. Drill the corners with a spade bit and cut out the floor boards with a jigsaw.

Determine the location of the newel post, trace the outside of the newel and mark where the rim joist should be.

Any time you have elevated floor space to an open area below, you need to have either a half-wall or a guardrail for fall protection.

A project we worked on recently made clever use of extra space in a deep garage by carving out a room. This included a loft space where the floor of the loft was built partially over the room’s closet and partly into the garage area, allowing the front end of a car to fit underneath the loft floor.

Determine where to cut the height of the newel post by starting at the point where the top of the guardrails will intersect the newel post and from there, measuring down 37 inches, determine the guardrail height without the carpet. And to that, add the length of newel post that will extend below the floor into the floor joist framing system.

Measure how much newel post will be able to sink below the floor.