You may want to consider using a different brand. I built a planter for my garden with LifeTime Lumber and it works great. It is VERY stiff, and it is not water soluble, so it will not decompose. Also, LifeTime Lumber is garden friendly, since it does not release toxins into the soil. http://www.ltlumber.com/ I built my planter on the balcony so that my dog would have a little grass to play on and it has a small aquarium in it to. Just Goldfish, since they are pretty tough and cheap to replace in case they die. Still sad when they die, though. :( Here is a link that might be useful: LifeTime Lumber

It's been 4 years now and our Portico deck still looks good. It appears that it gets slightly more porous as it ages, making it a little more difficult to power wash the winter's dirt off. It still beats staining though and there are no splinters. I also have noticed some spots of unknown origin, possibly tree sap, that appear. The pressure washer removes them, but they eventually return. Another poster reported the same problem and was very unhappy. I guess our expectations are a bit lower. We remain happy with the decision to go with portico. We used mahogany on the upper deck two years earlier and that, in spite of yearly applications of Australian Timber Oil, is weathering not much better than the original pressure treated pine. I find that spraying with Olympic Deck Cleaner with a garden sprayer, followed by pressure washing cleans it up rather easily. My neighbor built a deck with Ipe last summer, that was our alternate choice when we were making our selection. We decided against it because I had a sample board laying on the deck for several months and it was warping and splitting. I will see how their's holds up over the years to see if we made the right choice. I don't think the perfect deck material has been developed yet... I hope this helps.

Wow. I didn’t mean to come off as whining, strategery, Where I live in the South, composite isn’t used a lot vs wood, so it was a big decision for me. And, I do love how it turned out, so I guess I was surprised when I saw it. I always get a lot of good info from the different forums I read here so I thought this was a good place to ask. I never thought about the deck boards matching. That really doesn’t bother me and I’m not so sure if they did that would look natural?...I don’t know. I contacted the contractor that installed my deck and he come out and looked at it. From what I understood something broke inside of one of the Trex posts, I don’t know if it’s a bracket or exactly what, but you can slide the bottom piece up that supports. I’m not sure why but either way he is going to fix it. I attached a pic (I put the piece of brick there to show how it slides up and shouldn’t). Maybe that caused it to buckle, idk, I’m a female that admittedly knows nothing about things like this. Anyway, I really do appreciate all the good advice as it gave me an idea what could have happened and where to start. The support shouldn't have broke, and if it turns out it isn't an installation issue I will definitely be contacting Trex. Thanks again.

Thank you for your interest in Trex! When installing Trex Select deck boards we recommend installing the deck boards with the grain pattern running in the same directions on all boards. If the grain pattern is alternated when the light reflects off the pattern it can make the deck boards appear to be a different color. If you have any additional questions or we can be of any additional assistance please reach out to us at 1-800-BUY-TREX. Kindly, Trex Customer Care Team