Our Plantation Shutter Quality
At EJs, Inc we only use the highest quality materials in building our plantation shutters. We ask you to be very aware of what materials are being used to make your shutters. Once the product is painted or stained to finish, all materials might look the same, but you want to make sure your shutters will still look beautiful 10 years down the road. If you try to save a tiny bit of money now you will regret it when your shutters are yellowed or warping. In many cases we are at the same price as shutters with much lesser qualities.
Here are a few important key elements of our shutters.
-Magnet closing system (unlike pin and catch systems your shutters will close tight for life)
-Tension adjuster (if over time your louvers tilt down tighten them with a screwdriver)
-Powder coated hinges (wont chip like a painted finish)
-Loose pin hinge (take panels off without having to un-screw your hinge)
-Stainless steel staple (wont rust and bleed onto your panels)
-Glue coated staples (bonds with the shutters so they won't come out as easy)
Without naming these specific materials used ask other company reps what is in their shutters and make sure they have all of these important features.
Make sure to ask our sales reps, as well as other companies, to see a cross cut of there materials. This will show you what is under the paint and expose what kind of materials are being used. Any rep can show you a painted sample and tell you their materials are solid, but by looking at an un-finished cross cut you can tell exactly what you will be getting.
Are you working with a licensed installer? Did you know that if you higher a non-licensed contractor you are responsible for any damages they may cause, or injuries they may obtain. You have no legal course of action or definate way to track them down if the job does not go according to plan. EJ's Home Improvements is a California State Licensed Contractor with license number 921795.
Wood Shutters
I can't stress how important it is that this is the only type of wood to use for your shutters. With the rise in popularity of shutters over the last several years, many companies have started using cheaper quality woods to cut cost and be more competative in this sales environment.
The most common of these imitation wood shutters are MDF shutters. The name says it all, MDF stands for Medium Density Fiber. MDF is actually not a solid wood at all, it is glued and pressed wood from particles of many diffrent types of solid woods. Basically they take the leftover parts from wood mills (branches, small diameter trees and other mill waste), grind it down to a fiber, mix in a resin and press it down to look like wood. You are not only getting the ground down bad sections of the wood, but you are mixing several types of wood together. This type of wood is very pourous and over time will suck up moisture, crack your paint and warp. MDF is made to be used in your home for baseboards, crown molding and casings. In this application they are secured to wall with nails, and not a free floating product like a shutter louver.
Our wood shutters are 100% kiln dried Basswood. This is a process which takes all of the moisture out of the wood to ensure you will never get panel sagging. We offer a lifetime warranty against any panel or louver sagging. Here are some other key features of the basswood material:
-Strong but light which allows up to a 36" panel
-Uniform grain to allow for even and smooth stains and painted finishes
-Close wood grain resists moisture better than open grain woods
-Exceptional insulation
Faux Wood Shutters
Our faux wood shutters feature all of the same product elements as our wood shutters. Once again, when selecting faux wood shutters, it is very important to understand what type of materials are being used. The definition of the word faux, is French for false or fake. There are many types of "faux wood" shutters. We use a 100% extruded vinyl with a stainless steel core. It is very important to use a solid vinyl material, and our stainless steel core allows us to do panel widths up to 36". With standard solid vinyl shutters you can only get panel widths up to 28", this forces many standard size windows to be split into more shutter panels thus blocking your view. We also recommend staying away from PVC shutters. These are shutters made of the same materials as PVC pipes commonly used in irrigation. If you have ever seen a PVC pipe that has been in the sun for any amount of time you will notice that it is warped and yellow. The same thing will happen to your PVC shutters over time.
Composite Shutters
We do not offer composite shutters in our product line. Basically a composite shutter is a laminated particle board, The main design flaw here is in seperation of materials. Over time the vinyl shell tends to seperate from the wood core and will slide around. Over the last 35 years we have learned to stick with only solid products for our shutters