If you’ve got painted wooden frames around your windows and doors, you already know the cycle — scrape, prime, paint, and repeat every few years. And every time you put it off, the wood absorbs more moisture, the paint peels faster, and eventually the frames start to rot. Window and door capping solves this permanently. We custom-bend aluminum sheeting and fit it tightly over your existing wood frames, then seal everything with quality caulking. The result is a clean, maintenance-free finish that protects the wood underneath and never needs repainting. Modern Renovations provides window and door capping across Winnipeg and surrounding communities.
Capping — sometimes called window cladding or wrapping — is the process of covering your exterior window and door trim with pre-painted aluminum. The aluminum is measured and cut specifically for each window and door on your home, then bent on a brake right at your property to get precise, tight-fitting pieces. Once installed, it covers the wood completely — sills, jambs, header trim, and brick mould — sealing it from rain, snow, UV, and temperature swings.
It’s not a replacement for your windows or doors. The windows stay exactly the same. Capping just covers the wood trim surrounding them on the exterior, which is the part that rots, peels, and needs repainting.
Wood window trim on a Winnipeg home is constantly under attack. South and west-facing windows get hammered by UV, which breaks down paint faster than any other factor. Every freeze-thaw cycle drives moisture into cracks in the finish — even hairline cracks that are hard to see. Once water gets behind the paint, the wood swells, the paint lifts more, and the cycle accelerates.
We see the worst of it on homes built in the 60s and 70s across St. James, Transcona, East Kildonan, and Fort Garry — houses where the original wood window frames have been repainted three, four, five times. At a certain point, repainting is just buying time. Capping solves the problem for good.
We start with an onsite visit to measure every window and door. Each opening is a slightly different size, so nothing is pre-cut — it’s all custom work. We check the condition of the wood underneath. If it’s solid, we move ahead. If there’s rot, we replace the damaged wood first so the capping goes on over a solid surface.
Our crew bends each piece of aluminum to match your exact trim dimensions using a portable brake at your property. The pieces are fitted over the existing trim, secured, and caulked at every seam and joint. We match the colour to your siding, soffit, and fascia so the finished product looks cohesive.
Most homes can be fully capped in one to two days, depending on how many windows and doors are involved.
A lot of homeowners assume they need new windows when what’s actually failing is the wood trim around the window, not the window itself. If your glass units are still sealed, your windows open and close properly, and you’re not getting drafts through the frame, you probably don’t need new windows — you need capping on the exterior trim.
At $150 to $300 per window for capping versus $400 to $1,200+ per window for replacement, capping is a fraction of the cost and solves the aesthetic and rot problem completely. We’ll assess your situation honestly and tell you which option makes sense.
No. The capping covers the exterior trim only. It doesn’t interfere with the window sash, hardware, or operation in any way.
Pre-painted aluminum capping comes in a wide range of standard colours — white, cream, brown, grey, black, and more. We match the colour to your existing exterior so everything looks like it was done at the same time.
Decades. The aluminum itself doesn’t rust, rot, or degrade. The factory-applied paint finish holds its colour for 20+ years in most conditions. It’s a permanent solution — once it’s on, you’re done maintaining those frames.
Yes. If some windows are worse than others — usually the south and west-facing ones — we can cap just those now and do the rest later. Though most homeowners choose to do the whole house at once so the colour match is consistent.
If your window and door trim is peeling, rotting, or just overdue for another round of paint, give us a call. We’ll come out, check the wood, measure the openings, and give you a straight quote. Modern Renovations serves Winnipeg, East St. Paul, West St. Paul, Stonewall, Niverville, and communities across southern Manitoba.