Platbands for windows: materials, types, selection, manufacture, installation

The appearance of the house largely depends on how the windows are decorated. They emphasize, and sometimes form the style of the building. And the main way to give them character is platbands on the windows. Here we will talk about them further. 

Purpose and classification

Platbands are narrow long strips that frame windows or doors. According to this principle, window and door are distinguished. They usually differ in width, but, in order to maintain a single style, they must be made of the same material. In addition, they are made in a similar manner, using repeating elements and painting in one color.

Door and window platbands serve not only to give the building / room a finished look, although this is also important. They also close the technological gap that is formed between the door or window frame and the wall. After installing windows and doors, this gap is filled with insulation, but the view does not get better from this, and water, dust and sound continue to penetrate into the room, albeit in smaller quantities. So they came up with the idea to close that gap with slats, and even decorate them.

At the place of installation, platbands are external and internal. The protective role is mainly played by platbands for outdoor installation. Therefore, they are made from materials resistant to climatic factors (or coated with protective compounds) and the thickness of this material is usually greater. Internal platbands, basically, perform a decorative function. They are operated in gentle conditions, because the requirements for the properties of the material are different – decorativeness is important, and not resistance to climatic influences.

Materials used to make platbands for windows

Window platbands are selected depending on the general style of home decoration. Houses are built and finished differently, respectively, and the materials and style of additional decorative elements are different. For brick houses, for example, plastic or metal is better suited, but not wood (this is if there are platbands at all). Windows on houses trimmed with siding are also decorated with plastic or metal. For wood, on the contrary, it is wood that is more suitable. But this is not a rule either. The choice of platbands is a personal matter of the owner. What he wants, he puts them. It is only important to understand all the pros and cons of each material.

Wood

Platbands for a wooden house, most often, are made of wood. But any type of wood requires constant care – painting and / or varnishing. Once every two or three years, you have to renew the coating. Only in this case, products made from it look normal for many years.

The advantage of wooden window casings is that they can be carved, with figured elements of various shapes. This gives an almost infinite number of options. There are also very simple models – ordinary planks, possibly with some additional elements. The choice depends on the style of the house.

Wooden platbands are used, both from the side of the street and indoors. Just during installation, various protective impregnations and coloring compositions will be used.

Plastic

If PVC windows are installed in the house, then plastic trim is also installed. They are good because all care is periodic wiping from dust and dirt. No other operations are needed.

Plastic platbands are made of plastics resistant to climatic factors, adding a dye that is resistant to fading to the composition. Components are added to the mass that protect the material from high and low temperatures.

The advantage of plastic platbands is their low price. Minus – a limited selection of models and styles, not too large a range of colors. Available are usually white, a couple of shades of brown. The rest – can be available only on order, and even then not always. And one more minus – it’s still an artificial material. Not everyone wants to put plastic trim on a wooden house. Even despite the fact that wooden ones are not cheap at all.

The scope of use of plastic platbands is indoors or outdoors. If you need external plastic trim, pay attention to the operating temperature. Plastic must withstand the most severe frosts in your area.

MDF

MDF platbands – an option for indoor use. You can’t put it on the street – it will quickly become worthless. Represents the compressed crushed fibers of wood from which products are molded. Their surface is laminated with a film that can be smooth, colored, imitate the surface of a stone (marble, for example) or wood.

If you do not like plastic on the windows, the second possible budget option is MDF trim. In any case, they are most often placed on the door. There are even special models – telescopic. They are good because a special additional board is cut to the desired size, due to which they can change the width and fit into any opening. With their help, the doorway is made quickly and efficiently.

Caring for MDF platbands is no more difficult than for plastic ones – wet wiping. In case of heavy soiling, non-abrasive (liquid) and non-aggressive (without chorus, etc.) detergents can be used.

Metal platbands

This type of platband is usually placed on the street with plastic or metal-plastic windows. This is a thin sheet of galvanized metal coated with weather-resistant paint (usually powder paint).

Metal platbands on the windows are classified as budget. They don’t cost very much. Suitable for private houses decorated in a modern style. Metal platbands are perfectly combined with houses finished with metal and aluminum composite facade panels. The second area of ​​application is for industrial and office premises. They are good because they combine practicality, durability, low price.

A platband device

Classic platbands for windows consist of four elements: upper and lower trim, two side strips. They can be connected using a single spike (as in the figure). They can also be joined end-to-end, as they do not carry any load. In this case, they simply tightly fit the strips one to the other, fixing each element separately. 

If the window provides for a window sill, there is no need for a lower trim. During installation, the window sill is first fixed, then the side strips, and lastly, the upper trim. 

The width of the platbands is selected individually each time, but usually lies in the range of -100-250 mm. When choosing a width, two technical parameters are taken into account:

• the platband should go onto the frame by at least 5-10 mm;
• in order not to interfere with opening windows, they should deviate from the hinges by 10-20 mm (the farther, the wider the sashes open).

The final width is chosen based on the style of the house. Somewhere narrow strips are more suitable – 100-130 mm wide, somewhere you will need wide ones – 200-250 mm. In order not to be mistaken, you can “try on” the planks by nailing them on a couple of nails and looking from afar which option you like best.

The thickness of the strips for the manufacture of platbands is 20-35 mm. In most cases, a board 20-25 mm thick is used, since this is the optimal size for independent execution – it is not too difficult to process, but quite voluminous to obtain a decorative pitchfork.

Platbands in a wooden house

Most questions arise when decorating windows in a wooden house. Most are inclined to believe that only wooden platbands are suitable for a wooden house. There is a reason for this – a tree with a tree looks the most organically. But choosing the material is far from everything in this case. There are several important points to pay attention to:

• The wooden house is constantly changing dimensions. Even after the main shrinkage, it has seasonal shifts. It is necessary to fasten platbands on windows and doors taking into account this phenomenon.
• Houses made of logs – rounded and not – have an uneven surface. With self-installation of platbands on windows, this also raises questions.
  

• In a wooden house, when installing platbands, one must think that water does not flow into the gaps to compensate for shrinkage. There are certain solutions for this and you also need to know about them.

So the choice of the appearance of the platbands is far from the last one, of those that will have to be decided. It is also necessary to choose the method of processing wood, the method of installation, and the type of casing too.

Types of wooden platbands

Wood is an extremely plastic and very beautiful material, therefore the number of variations in the design of platbands tends to infinity … All of them can be conditionally divided into several types: simple and carved. Simple ones look great on modern-style houses, carvings are good for ethnic buildings.

Simple in shape from moldings

Industry and private traders sell strips of various sections:

• smooth (with and without chamfers),
• with rounded edges
• with a rounded surface (radius),
• curly.
  

From this molding, you can make simple platbands with your own hands. To do this, you need to calculate the amount of material needed (according to the results of window measurements). At the same time, it should be taken into account that the length of one plank is 220 cm. You are unlikely to make composite elements, therefore it is worth considering that there will be a lot of trimmings. The most successful case is if two elements can be “cut out” from one plank – usually this is the sidewall and the upper / lower part.

Planks are joined in two ways – at 90° and floor 45°. At the same time, the appearance of the platbands is different. When joining the floor at 45°, a neat frame is obtained, and when joined at 90°, a more expressive design is obtained. The protruding edges can be left straight, can be cut at any angle, rounded, curly cut … Here it is how you like it more or what skill, desire, imagination is enough for.

The simplest homemade platbands

The option differs from the one described above in that we carry out the primary processing ourselves. Edged and unedged boards are suitable. From edged ones, a modest finish is obtained for a country house or for a house made of planed / glued beams. We grind the board first with coarse sandpaper, then with finer and finer sandpaper. When the surface becomes smooth and even, you can start cutting.

The bark is removed from the unedged board, the surface is also polished. There are options here. You can achieve smoothness by removing flaws. You can only remove the upper rough layer, leaving all the imperfections of the wood in the future, only emphasize it during processing.

Carved architraves

Openwork wooden platbands on the windows are a beautiful, but expensive option. Expensive – if you order their execution, and time-consuming if you do it yourself. There are, however, simple, but spectacular patterns that, if you have a jigsaw and desire, you can do it yourself.

There are two types of openwork platbands – with slotted and overhead elements. Slotted – this is when the holes in the platbands are made through and through them the wall is visible. Overhead – this is when the window is decorated with ordinary planks, and on top of them elements of slotted carving or decorative protruding elements (linings in the form of rhombuses, rectangles, etc.) are fixed.

In the case of overlays, contrasting colors are often used. For example, planks are painted dark, and openwork is painted light. But this trick is easy only at the installation stage – you can separately paint both parts. Subsequently, you have to carefully, with a thin brush, apply different paints.

How and why to fix platbands in a wooden house

In a timber or log house, windows and doors are placed on the casing – a special frame of the opening made of wood, which is not rigidly fixed to the walls, but is held by friction in a comb / groove lock. The casing is made of thick wooden beams. The window or door frame is attached to the casing. When installing platbands, they are also attached to the casing. Since there is no load on them, the planks are usually fixed on both sides, stepping back 10-15 cm from the edge.

Fasteners can be used in two types:

• Finish nails. They almost do not have a hat, there are different colors, so you can pick up those that will hardly be visible.
  

• Dowels. These are small wooden cylinders, under which a corresponding hole is drilled. For inconspicuous fastening of platbands on a wooden house, “deaf dowels” are used. Under them, from the wrong side of the plank, holes are drilled that do not pass through. The hole remains “blind”. For example, with a board thickness of 20 mm, the depth of the hole is no more than 15 mm. The reciprocal hole is drilled in the casing. Its depth is such that the dowel is completely drowned. The dowel is smeared with glue, inserted into the holes in the wall and “put on” a part of the casing on them.

Mounting on dowels is more laborious, but it is absolutely invisible. If this process is too complicated, use finishing nails.

How to fix platbands to a log wall

There are no problems when installing platbands on a bar from a bar: the surface is flat, it is easy to attach to it. If the log house is made of logs, everything is more complicated. There are two options:

1. Nail the bars to the casing, which will make it possible to carry the platbands outside the wall. The gaps formed from the sides are filled with mounting foam, after polymerization it is cut off, sealed with putty. It is desirable to choose the color to match the walls. For more reliable sealing, the foam can be passed with silicone sealant (look at the temperature range so that the sealant tolerates frost). If you don’t like the idea of ​​using foam on wood, you can caulk the cracks, and then seal them up again with putty.
   

2. Along the perimeter of the window, the logs are hewn, practically leveling a section of the wall 30-35 cm wide. The saw cuts are processed, after which the platbands can be mounted. Aligning the wall “completely” is far from always possible. More often it becomes not so “wavy”. The gaps remaining in this case are closed by one of the methods described above.
   

Which way to choose is your decision. Both are viable and both are not ideal – it is difficult to ensure tightness.

How to prevent moisture from leaking under the platbands

Ensuring tightness is the main concern when installing architraves on a wooden house. Most of the questions arise about how to prevent moisture from leaking under the top bar. Water, flowing down the wall, inevitably falls into the gap between the casing and the wall. There are several options for solving the problem, mostly traditional, but using new materials.

Platbands with a wooden “visor”

Such architraves are also called “Finnish”, since almost all houses in Finland are framed in this way. In them, in addition to the traditional four slats, they also make an additional inclined visor, which is supported by consoles resting against the side slats. It is desirable to choose the angle of inclination of the bar the same as the angle of inclination of the roof or close to it. Although an insignificant detail, such a finish looks more organic.

When installing, under the visor in a log or beam, you can cut a few millimeters, “drown” the edge of the visor there, seal the remaining gap from below and above with a sealant (silicone, frost-resistant, with adhesion to wood).

Finnish platbands are good for everyone, but they are poorly combined with carving. The style is not the same. They are great for a simpler, concise design. Although, there are similar options in the Russian style, but making them is not at all easy.

Metal visor

By the same principle – to divert water from the platbands – this method solves the problem. Only a metal bar in the form of the letter Z is used – part of the standard ebb. The color is selected to match the walls or the color of the cashing.

The installation method is the same: they make a cut in the wall, only its size is much smaller – the thickness of the bar is several millimeters. The installation is the same as described earlier: we put one part into the groove, seal the gaps with silicone sealant. The only difference is that the free edge can be fixed to the top trim of the trim (using self-tapping screws).

Installing the bottom trim at an angle

The lower lath of the casing washes at the same time to serve as protection against precipitation. To do this, it is set at an angle. The choice of the angle of inclination is the same – close to the angle of the roof.

With the installation of this bar, everything is simple. From below, it is supported by triangles carved from wood, fixed on a frame. Water will not flow down the wall, but at some distance from it. Here it is already important to properly remove wastewater from the house – so that the water does not wash away the foundation.

Photos of platbands on windows of various types