Should You Buy Home Supplies At Lowe's Or Home Depot... Or Buy From Distributors Instead?

I had an interesting conversation with the manufacturer of ChoiceDek and MoistureShield -- which are two of the leading composite deck materials on the market today.

The manufacturer is Advanced Environmental Recycling Technologies (AERT).

The rep who answered my phone call got to play "20 Questions" with me. Fortunately, he was a good sport, and he was willing to tackle any question I sent his way -- even when it wasn't specifically related to his product(s).

This guy definitely went above and beyond to be helpful to me in my decision to go with composite decking in our new log home, or not.

One interesting thing that I learned had to do with the differences between buying home improvement supplies at places like Home Depot and Lowe's, compared to buying from local distributors and the manufacturer's own list of suppliers.