PVC TRIM VS. WOOD TRIM? (Pros And Cons!)

Hello everyone, I'm Ethan James with the calm of the onyx carpenter. My clients ask me a lot of questions about PVC

trim

versus

wood

trim

, what the

pros

and

cons

of each are, so I wanted to make a video to clear up some of the mystery surrounding it. this topic, but I'm really going to focus on PVC trim because it seems to cause the most confusion for homeowners. I think the reason for this is because when you say PVC, people almost always imagine these PVC pipes that we almost universally use for plumbing. drain lines What they don't realize is that PVC has become a more versatile product today; it is being distributed massively compared to just two years ago; is outperforming a lot of other products when it comes to moldings and housings, so I'm going to answer a lot of questions about PVC here, but before I continue, I'll quickly say that if you want to see more helpful videos like this, be sure to hit the subscribe button below and also press the little bell next to it like that.

You will receive notifications when I post something new. Alex Carpenter's channel is increasing its production these days and you will receive many interesting topics like this, so

cons

ider subscribing and turning on notifications. Ok, onto the tutorial in general. The words trim and siding refer to the linear

wood

pieces that cover the edges, corners and edges of our homes and for many years all of this trim was made from wood or wood byproducts, but the problem is that wood trim They really have a hard time in wet places or places. where it could become saturated because it is organic it can rot, there are methods to make wood trim last longer in these situations.

I talk about a couple of my videos on repairing rotten trim, but what the construction industry really wanted was a material that was really resistant to rot and water penetration what they got was cellular PVC in essence, this product is chemically just like plumbing pipes and vinyl siding. They are all made from polyvinyl chloride, a synthetic plastic polymer that can be turned into almost anything except cellular PVC trim. It differs from other construction products. and that it is basically aerated to make it lighter and less dense. You can see this aeration when you look at the exposed edge.

It has a porous and foamy appearance similar to the final grain and wood. The number of finishing products that are manufactured with this material is multiplying enormously. In recent years, it still can't compare to this staggering amount of wood trim products you'll find, but it's not really necessary since PVC trim is only necessary in a handful of scenarios. So what are those scenarios where you can find PVC moldings and how? how much it will cost and what it's like to work with is what I'm going to discuss here, so let's start with where and how much.

The good news is that you can get PVC molding virtually anywhere these days, at all the big box stores. If you carry one or more brands, you will often find them slightly separated from the other trim, usually in the doors and windows section of the store, and the first thing you will probably notice is that it is quite expensive, how expensive it is in relation to the product , but for something like a 1 by 10, 8 foot long board you can easily expect to pay over $40, it may make you cringe a little, but the thing is, it's not as expensive as it used to be.

I have personally seen the costs of PVC trim increase. It's down something like 25 percent in my region in just the last two years, and that means it's barely more expensive than the dimensional lumber we often use for trimming, like knotty pine and light pine, both of which have experienced price increases in recent years. I used a little bit of exterior work in two ways, one with wood products and one with PVC products, and customers always went for the cheapest wood just to save cost, but as of last year, with less and less cost distribution , I don't even understand.

My clients have the option I only offer exterior repairs with PVC. My customers hardly feel the price increase and I am able to offer a product that is truly designed to withstand the elements. That being said, where exactly should you use PVC in a home? The answer is anywhere it can come. in contact with water, which means that virtually all trim components on the exterior of a home are candidates for PVC insulation. In next week's video, I'll discuss the most rot-prone areas of your home and the details, so be sure to check back. for that, but for now I will say that I especially like to see PVC molding in some places, sills, brick molding around doors and windows on fascia boards and that is the board that just goes up the roof line, these are areas so sensitive to water that in the future Personally, I would never do a new installation there without using PVC, but it is not just the exterior areas of a house where it can be used.

Certain rooms within your home are great places for PVC trim and most importantly bathrooms, especially baseboards and shoe molds in the bathroom or any trim near or around the tub and shower, also bedrooms. Laundry rooms and mud rooms are another good area for PVC because they are cleaned frequently and because PVC moldings are manufactured in a greater variety than ever, you can find a variety of moldings. profiles to use around these rooms, so those are just a few places where I think you can benefit the most from installing PVC trim, but as a product, what is it like to work with?

It is actually very easy to work with in many ways, it is almost no different from wood. for example, it cuts very similar to the wood you can see here cutting crosswise with the circular saw. It's practically the same as cutting a flat piece of wood. The product maintains a nice clean edge and miter cuts are no different. It can make extremely sharp tight miters. with a jigsaw for PVC moldings, completely smooth and precise, if anything, PVC is easier to cut because there is no grain to resist the blade. I can run this original detail like it's nothing, you can easily notch it to fit the utilities. wood here, you can see me putting a ply or bullnose on the end of this board, the material doesn't remove too fast or too slow, it's just the responsiveness you want for sanding, that's for nailing, it's not either so different here, I'll give it to you.

Drive in a two-inch galvanized coil-shank nail, which you often use on exterior trim. The nail is set into PVC just as you would into regular pine molding and then nailed in the same manner. You can even use a nail set to countersink the head that comes out. a smooth divot perfect for caulking or wood putty, so there's a world of similarities here. Well, what are the differences between PVC trim and wood trim? I would say that the most important ones are chemical in nature. I don't use the same adhesives for PVC. moldings you would use for wind moldings.

I only use a handful of products that specifically state they can be used with PVC. DAP is the leading national manufacturer of conks and sealants. Well, I won't be using their Alex Plus or Alex Quick Dry for PVC. I only use their Alex flex because it is the only product that specifically mentions on the tube that it can be used with PVC trim. The same goes for adhesives. I've used liquid nails for many things over the years, but on PVC projects I converted to a Premium Locking Type PL because it once again says on the tube that it can be used with PVC products.

I often use premium PL along with Brad Neil's, which you can see me doing here in the shop, but this is exactly how I built these PVC wraps for some wrought iron columns in the field, if you want a great example from a place where wood trim should never have been used, it is probably because the original carpenters wrapped these columns with clear pine which they placed in direct contact with a stone and masonry patio and what happened the wood absorbed the water from the wet surface and rotted quickly . It was guaranteed to rot from the start.

TV sees the perfect replacement here because it can resist soil moisture without problems with a PL combination. adhesives I can join all the components together and seal at the bottom because, by the way, some of the pieces for this project were so wide that I had to buy entire sheets of 3/4 inch thick PVC and then tear them all the way to the bottom . sides, as I needed, this material is harder to find and at a hundred and sixty dollars a sheet it seems incredibly expensive, but it's actually no more expensive than buying, say, 12-inch wide PVC boards with the same length, it just isn't I want to mess up a cut on one of these entire sheets because that would be a very costly mistake, so the sealants and adhesives must be formulated with PVC, but the paint doesn't necessarily have to be Zek Royal trim and other manufacturers claim it can be used . any acrylic latex paint on PVC here you see me using paint valves plus primer to apply a couple of coats most PVC trim paints are exactly like wood and now they are even adding some surface texture to the product on these days to give it a little more. tooth or something for the paint to adhere to here, you can see a totally normal finish and shine at this angle, so one difference is that a lot of these companies say not to use dark paint on PVC trim because it creates this heat index problem which causes the paint to fail and it's really better to choose lighter colors for your paint choice on PVC trim, this brings us to a couple of other oddities about the product such as ABC wood being prone to expanding and contracting, but the point is that it does not expand. and it contracts for the same reasons that wood swells due to moisture content, it gets wet and swells, but PVC expands due to heat, so in wano the product will shrink and in summer it will expand due to the increase of temperatures, so it is best to treat it as if it were pine. or other wood, install it with some gaps around the boards during the winter or when it's warmer, you can tighten it up a little more as long as your kids are acclimated to the temperature outside and speaking of which, here's a place I think which is truly superior to wood.

It doesn't warp due to environmental factors if you leave a wet treated pine board in the sun for a while what do you get with a warp like this deck board I tore up to replace but leave some boards with PVC trim on the outside? the Burning Sun and what happens to them, nothing except that they will probably max out on a curve if you store them incorrectly, but they won't because of a drying process, which is one less headache on a job site, so I just listed many benefits of PVC but the drawbacks are that it can be marred or damaged quite easily as seen here even slight contact with tools can cause it to go bad.

Sometimes it can be difficult to find a board in the store. which does not yet have any defects on the surface, another drawback is one that I already mentioned in the video when you cut PVC, the exposed edges will look very porous like the end grain, only a little worse and at each exposed cut edge it can be hard. To dampen this appearance, manufacturers recommend a few ways to seal it in their warranty guidelines, but I found that to some extent you just have to deal with it, which brings me to my biggest pet peeve, PVC sawdust that I've never seen before.

I have tried. I've seen something similar, this sticks to everything, if you break a long board you'll come out looking like you're covered in coconut flakes. You really should wear dust masks and vacuum up dust every time you cut PVC, even if you can. I don't understand it all and I often feel bad about littering the garden with these things, they don't go anywhere and are so visible that we have more than enough problems with the proliferation of microplastics these days, it seems this can only make things worse. things. but again, the product is very difficult, the dust is handled in a workplace and that seems to be the way things are as of now, so those are the drawbacks of PVC at the end of the day, although this is Without a doubt the best molding product ever created to last.

PVC cannot rot and that makes it invaluable in certain situations now that it is becoming cheaper year after year. You'll see it replacing wood trim more and more and that's it for the PVC trim vs. wood trim video. I hope the tutorial was useful. Be sure to post questions or opinions in the comments. I always try to respond as always, thanks for watching and be sure to check back for more videos, thanks everyone.