VERSATEX Trimboard News
August 2008 - VERSATEX cellular PVC trim and sheet. It’s not just for exterior applications any more.
Finish contractors are finding new places to substitute VERSATEX trim for both interior and exterior applications--where wood is just not making the cut.
Early adopters like Jim Montgomery from Lettieri Construction in Westhampton Beach, NY, got on the cellular PVC bandwagon years ago. He saw the true advantage of PVC over wood, and started switching to PVC on windows, doors and corners, then graduated to soffits, fascias and more sophisticated uses where weather would just plain ruin wood. His company had a great source for it, too. It was a well-known brand. Life was good.
Then his dealer told him they were switching to a lesser-known brand, VERSATEX, and Jim was not immediately sold. He had lots of questions for his dealer salesperson about what he could expect from this new product and new company. Were the tolerances as good? How did it mill and rout? He was skeptical.
Then he tried VERSATEX, and he was very impressed. In Montgomery’s opinion, VERSATEX is a much more consistent product—with more exact exterior dimensions, and with internal consistency throughout the boards. For instance, with his old product, Montgomery noticed that the thickness of panels and planks could vary greatly from piece to piece. But it was not so with VERSATEX. He feels VERSATEX has a tighter cell structure that makes a more consistent product.
That led him to another discovery—to try VERSATEX inside the home, in places where poplar and maple were suffering from exposure to moisture of all sorts. Now, Jim uses VERSATEX in virtually every portion of the house. Inside and outside. He has a couple of new home projects where anything on the house exterior that is painted, (other than a set of mahogany exterior doors), is made of VERSATEX PVC product. All the obvious exterior features are made of VERSATEX—columns, window trim, corners, soffit and fascia, railing and balusters. But Montgomery also used VERSATEX for all sorts of new and unusual applications: window boxes, posts, surrounds for masking trash receptacles – he even created new window and doorjambs, replacing the ones supplied by the manufacturers.
Inside the home, Montgomery discovered more places to try VERSATEX—shoe moulding in bathrooms, for shower enclosures, laundry rooms, and other places where moisture ruins wood. He also used VERSATEX inside for radius walls, enclosures, and inside window casings. For a deluxe custom finish, Lettieri paints 100% of the product, using latex primer and latex finish coatings.
Jim Montgomery has had success with every VERSATEX application. “I keep pushing to see what I can’t build out of VERSATEX.”
He’s also not afraid of long runs and expansion and contraction. “We follow installation instructions, and fasten, fill and caulk according to recommended procedures.” His current house project has soffit runs of 60 feet, and he’s used VERSATEX for every inch of the job. He defies anyone to spot the seams. His builders have gotten it down to a science.
Montgomery has also experimented with bending VERSATEX product, and has perfected that process as well. He has built a bending machine out of stainless steel chimney flues and a propane heater, working with different temperatures and times inside the chamber. With experience comes success--Jim has added temperature gauges and vents to fine-tune the process. All this experimentation has given him the calculations for timing and getting the bending of a plank down to an exacting process. He also knows just how long to heat the plank to keep the tensile strength and other engineered in properties he needs.
Montgomery realizes that some customers have the idea that for high-end homes, the only trim material that should be used is painted wood. He brings new homeowner prospects to his construction sites to show VERSATEX PVC trim and sheet and how it looks and works in the real world, and they cannot believe it is ‘vinyl’. “You have to see the product in place, then you will be a believer like me.”