Vintage Woodworks Rocks

I posted earlier about my porch floor thoughts. I decided to go with the "Clay" color of the Azek boards from Vintage Woodworks. (Clay is the bottom one below)


Although in my internet searching, I came across some info that Azek was coming out with a tongue & groove version in a new line they are calling "Azek Porch". However, to my dismay, they are only selling this in brownstone & slate gray...

I even called up the Ask Azek line to see if there was any chance that they were going to come out with the other colors they offered in their decking line. Of course, the person I was actually talking to was just some customer service rep, so she didn't have any answers for that kind of question. "maybe they will announce something in a few weeks or maybe never".... yeeeaaaahhhh, not so helpful.

So with that excitement, and then disappointment, I went ahead and put in my order with VWW for 3.5 Clay deck boards yesterday.

Today I got a call from Roland, one of the owners of VWW. He felt really bad, but I had found an on-line catalogue issue. They did not currently have any 3.5 boards in Clay, and he had called around to all the area resellers and had not been able to find any more. They could make a special order, however, minimums are 2000 boards (my order was only for 90). -- not really in my price range! We talked about what options I had:
-5.5 deck boards in Clay were in stock
-3.5 deck boards in brownstone and slate gray were in stock
-he might be able to get 3.5 in clay in the next month or so if he gets left overs from another reseller's special order
-he mentioned the Azek Porch product that they were going to carry starting May 24-ish

Hmmmmm.... my dilemma is that really only clay and ivory look acceptable with the current paint scheme. AND it needs to be thin boards to look traditional.

So after talking it out with him, I asked "Could I take a 5.5 board and rip it down to 3.5 and route the edge a little? Maybe you can send me a board to try out?" He was like, "geesh - I should have thought about that! Let me go try"

He called back a little later this afternoon, and said it turned out really well. Then I also asked him if they could route a T&G instead of making a deck board. He said they did that all the time with their pvc beadboard, so that shouldn't be a problem either. He came up with another idea that would use up more of the 5.5 also - just rip it in half. The boards would be smaller than 3.5, but not too small - and would save me in material cost. So now it looks like my options for clay are opened up:
-Buy 5.5, rip to 3.5 and give it a decking edge
-Buy 5.5, rip to 3.5 and route a T&G
-Buy 5.5, split it in half and have smaller deck boards

I'm kind of leaning towards the T&G option. Of course, this is probably the most expensive (of course)



What do you think?