Project Components
- System: Bay Area Railings Base Shoe Glass Rail System
- Mounting Type: Y mount
- Base Shoe: Q-Railing Y mount base shoe
- Glass: 9/16" clear laminated glass
- Finish: Matte Black Powder Coat
- City: Emerald Hills
- Price: Starting at $450 per linear foot installed
Project Overview
This Emerald Hills home sits high on the ridge with its main deck wrapping the whole western side, looking out over the canyon and across the bay. A deck like this is the reason the owners bought the house, and a conventional picket or cable guard would have cut that view into strips at exactly the height you sit and stand. The railing had to hold the edge without becoming part of the picture.
We built our Base Shoe Glass Rail System around the deck and up the interior stair. The glass is 9/16 inch clear laminated, carried in a continuous Q-Railing Y mount base shoe finished in matte black, with the panels joined by slim black glass-to-glass clamps rather than posts. There is no top rail – the laminated interlayer is what makes that safe – so the run reads as one uninterrupted plane of glass from the house to the far corner.
Base shoe was the right call here because the deck edge is long, straight and continuous: a shoe lets the glass carry itself along its whole length, so we could delete the posts and the top rail entirely. Y mount keeps the shoe tucked in from the fascia so the deck line stays clean when you look up at the house from the canyon. Laminated glass with no top rail is the most transparent guard we build, and on a view lot that is the whole point.
