New Materials and New Practices Spell Success for Rhode Island Remodeling Contractor

Considering Alternatives

Take architectural trim, conventionally crafted from solid wood, but now available in historically correct, weather-resistant PVC shapes. “It’s a sad fact, but wood rots,” Joe notes. “In coastal new England the wood starts to go, and people say, ‘I don’t want to keep painting this stuff.’ So I began to tell them, ‘Why don’t we try this PVC product? It gives you the same look, and the weather can’t hurt it.’

“We got over the learning curve pretty easily and, since we got familiar with it, our clients have been convinced. It’s not hard to sell that kind of value. Once you explain it, people don’t want any other substitute.”

Joe’s choice, among several US PVC trim manufacturers, is VERSATEX Trimboard, a Pittsburgh-based company that he praises for consistently high quality, complete product line, availability and service.

“We're solving lots of renovation problems with VERSATEX,” he says. “In areas where historic wood trim is exposed to a lot of water and then deteriorating, we come in, remove the rotten trim and install accurate new profiles made from PVC.

“I just finished a project that called for replacing some rake boards where a gambrel-roofed house had been dormered. The dormer rake along the upper gambrel sees a lot of splash-back. It’s basically in contact with the upper gambrel roof shingles. It became rotten, so we replaced it with VERSATEX PVC. Problem solved, and it will look great for decades to come.

“And this fall we'll be replacing wood trim on a 13-year-old Greek Revival house. It’s a nice, architect-designed place, but the trim is rotting in areas where there's high water exposure — like where door trim contacts the wood deck, or where a lower roof spills water onto what was once a beautiful, built-up corner board. We’ll be able to duplicate that corner board exactly, and the homeowner can forget about it ever warping or rotting.”