By Mark Clement
Trim is always the piece de resistance in a finished project. While the studs and joists hold a project together, it's the trim work that speaks to the customer or homeowner every day—and tells the story of the house.
Of course, trim has been made of wood, like most everything else in a house. And that's fine for the inside. But outside in the snow, burning sun, salt spray or spring rain, trim has a harder time staying pretty. And it needs to be maintained with the dreaded scrape-and-paint job every few years. That is, unless you spec AZEK trim boards for your next exterior trim trick-out.
AZEK makes trim boards in all kinds of profiles from 1-by to crown to sheet stock to pre-fabricated corner boards—and you can use it anywhere your imagination can take you.
You can use sheets, square stock, bead board and other combinations to build up trim packs for detailing a porch. You can size the sheet stock and 1-by and run it on a shaper or router table and create true raised panel details. Or, for more standard installations, use the basic 1-by to build larger cornerboards, window trims or soffit and fascia.
AZEK is also applicable to designs that aren't necessarily affixed to the house. Backyard structures, patios and decks are suitable—even popular—locations for builders to flex their imaginations for detailing their work.
AZEK is a cellular PVC product that feels and works like pine. You can shoot it with gun nails, cut it with saws and route it with standard cutters. It's a little heavier and floppier than pine so you need to be ready for that, say when you're doing a long rip. It's also more flexible than pine so it works very well in radius applications. AZEK is suitable in non-load bearing applications anywhere you'd use wood on the exterior of a house. And while it's more flexible than wood, it won't sag between 16-center framing members if properly nailed and glued, say in a soffit.
The material also takes glue like nothing you've ever seen. Glue (AZEK has their own brand, but other adhesives work as well) actually fuses the separate pieces of stock together and creates a joint stronger than the material itself.
Finally, paint: AZEK doesn't need to be painted to last. It'll get dirty during installation however, so you need to paint it to keep it pretty. The good news is that it only requires one pass with acrylic latex to develop color uniformity throughout the project. And, you can paint it different colors.
The only place you can't use AZEK, at least in large quantities, is inside the house. Learn more or even share your own installations at AZEK's website.
www.AZEK.com
Mark Clement is a remodeler and author of The Carpenter's Notebook and The Kid's Carpenter's Workbook, Fun Family Projects! Find out more at
www.TheCarpentersNotebook.com.
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