VINYL IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR WOOD

By Karen Von Hahn

Saturday, April 24, 2004 - Page L3

A lawyer's closing statement makes her case. The chic toggle on a designer handbag operates as the international symbol for its hefty price tag. If everyone out there is looking for closure, why is it that even people who are interested in matters of style, willing to spend a little extra on a good haircut or a nice pair of shoes, think only of the bottom line when it comes to their home's doors and windows?

Consider this: If your lovely house snaps shut with one of those cutesy "builder" front doors or the cheap vinyl windows that are quickly ruining every streetscape from Victoria to St. John's, you might as well be living inside a Rubbermaid container. (Although, from a purely aesthetic view, with these fittings' ill proportions, tasteless motifs and flimsy impression, they more closely resemble giant versions of the moulded plastic doors and windows on Barbie's Dream Home.) The big sell on the floor at the likes of Home Depot is that vinyl windows and doors save you money in maintenance and heating costs. Like the similarly evil and ubiquitous microwaveable kitchenware, they seal tight as a drum and don't leak. But with environmental allergies such as asthma now epidemic in North America, maybe turning our homes into sealed vaults, no matter how energy-efficient they may be, isn't such a brilliant idea (not to mention eating food steaming hot from a plastic container). As we have seen with other consumable oil derivatives such as trans-fatty fast food, such little economies bear hidden health costs. To my mind, the inevitable schmaltz effect of vinyl on doors and windows is like hiring a pop artist called Crisco to wrap your house in hydrogenated oil.

Unfortunately, the past decade has seen vinyl so completely triumph over old-fashioned wood as the material of choice that in my reno-happy neighbourhood, hardly a day goes by without another heavy old oak door with a lovely, drafty oval pane of wobbly glass being replaced with a more energy-efficient faux-door of steel injected with heat-trapping plastic, its pane ornamented with an egregious etched rose, or "leaded" with insertions of anemic strips of brass.

This substandard form has become so standard that even the most intrepid do-it-yourself home renovator would be hard-pressed to find any less heinous alternative, as suppliers of authentic, Old World quality materials such as wood windows have become the exclusive purview of knowledgeable architects and high-end home builders whose clients can afford to pay for them. And yet even this clientele is increasingly becoming unconvinced of their cachet.

"I will go ahead and specify a good window built from Douglas fir to a client and the contractor will come along and say, 'Oh, you can get perfectly good vinyl ones for half the price,' " says Toronto architect Marco Polo, who cites custom-built wood windows as the No. 1 expense of his own renovation. In his view, when it comes to building materials, you get what you pay for. "Inevitably, I'll get calls from the client who chose to save money with vinyl two years later complaining that the windows aren't closing properly."

According to Polo, who also teaches architectural science at Ryerson University, vinyl is lacking as a material for moveable fittings such as doors and windows because it does not have wood's strength. "What you end up with if you use vinyl is a smaller window, thicker frames and more divisions in the panes because the material is structurally insufficient to support large surfaces of heavy glass."

He adds that architects tend to prefer the exact opposite: slender frames with lots of glass and minimal impediment to the view. It is precisely vinyl's lack of gravitas -- it's essentially an extruded and cooled gormless goop that is shaped into a building material -- that makes it insufficient to the task. "There is something in a real, heavy door or double-hung sash window that when it closes properly makes a real nice closing sound," Polo says.

But the real crime of vinyl windows and doors is simply their appearance. "The problem is that it's all in the detailing, which the material just can't replicate . . . it always has this sort of plastic sheen," Polo explains. "The aesthetic of a cheap vinyl door or window that tries to look traditional is just ghastly and, worst of all, whatever style it's trying to be in is usually one that's all wrong for the style of the house." Lest you think such trifles are not of importance, consider the accessory analogy. Windows and doors are the rhythmic ornament on your home's facade, and whether they sparkle like Harry Winston diamonds or hang like tawdry plastic beads, they will always be the first things to draw attention, particularly if the accessory in question is the front entrance.

"When you think about doors and windows, there is a jewellery aspect," says Flora Goudsmit, co-owner of The Door Store, a 9,000-square-foot Toronto warehouse filled with old and interesting doors and windows, many of which are handmade and imported from Europe and the Middle East. "Why would you even bother with plastic, when you can solve a door problem creatively with something hand-forged out of iron from France?"

"Doors and windows, in the way that they interact with the outside, are really the most public element of a house," agrees Polo. "The front door is a kind of introduction. And if the message it sends out is one that is completely utilitarian, that's rather a missed opportunity." In closing, I would only add that when it comes to building materials, ugliness, thy name is vinyl. And I would rather wear two sweaters when I read in the living room than burp 'n' seal a Tupperware lid onto the front of my old house.