Adding Finishing Touch with Crossheads

Your front door and windows are the first things that guests and visitors to your home will notice. Make sure that they reflect the beauty and grace of your home while expressing your personal sense of style. Adding trim around your doors and windows actually serves several purposes. For one thing, trim like pilasters and crossheads provide emphasis and definition to these openings. You can also use these decorative trim pieces to disguise small construction flaws, which we all wish weren't there but in reality, exist in just about every home. Besides, pilasters and crossheads are a great way to incorporate another component of your exterior decor theme. You'll often find these trim elements on houses in the eastern part of the U.S., but that doesn't mean that they can't be used with other home styles to add a striking look that helps to define a doorway or window.

Whether you're looking to transform just your entryway or to spice up and define your window openings as well, the process of installing crossheads is relatively simple and can be accomplished by most do-it-yourselfers. Since these are decorative elements that don't support any other architectural features, there's no worry about load-bearing and those types of issues. Made from highly durable polyurethane, crossheads are lightweight and only require standard tools used for working with wood and an excellent adhesive product. Once installed, you can paint the crosshead to match other trim or in a contrasting color if you're looking for a really bold statement. Crossheads used over windows are often a bit smaller or less ornate than the crosshead that you place over a front doorway. Although these architectural  embellishments are usually fairly subtle in their designs, you don't want to overdo the look by placing a massive crosshead over every opening. A better choice might be to select smaller or simpler versions of the entryway crosshead and place these over the windows for a unifying look and just the right amount of enhancement. To make the job of picking out a crosshead and coordinating pilasters even easier, you'll find that you can often buy these pieces bundled together in a kit.