Over the last 10 years, we’ve tried all kinds of wraps for our aluminum windows. We first used drywall with elastomeric caulk for attachment to the windows but that wouldn’t weather as well (the caulk would eventually crack, unevenly).
We then moved to an L-metal with small, 1/16″ reveal. This was pretty successful, but labor intensive and the install/ mudding could end up damaging the window finish.
Then, the “pull-out zip-strip” was released- a two component vinyl that protected the window during mudding and paint. Even with this, we haven’t been entirely satisfied with the crispness of the result- you still have the interior window corners to tape and the pull-out leaves a little larger gap to the window than we’d like.
For Mike’s house, we’ve unleashed our best result to date. We used wood wraps with a dato on the wall edge side to receive a corner bead of drywall. It matches our wood door jambs on our passage and pocket doors, and has a small reveal that ties with our other details in the home (such as the flush base that you’re liking and we like too).

As for the railing, that is 2″ flat bar with 3/8″ rods. The bars are welded and ground smooth and the rods have a very small plug weld at each vertical. The whole assembly is made from cold rolled steel (no mill scale), cleaned, conditioned and waxed.

1. I’ll let Build chime in on that. Not exactly sure what it is, but it’s super low profile.

2. The railing is custom made, locally, by a fellow named Olda Zinke. I’ll have a post on that specifically this week… possibly even tonight.

The progress looks great, congrats. A couple questions for you:

1. I couldn’t tell from the photos, but are you going to use a standard wood/composite/pvc trim or something more modern like an L-bead around the doors and windows? (The baseboard moulding looks awesome btw)

2. What type of railing do you have on the catwalk and stairway? It doesn’t look like the semi-ubiquitious cable railing in modern homes. Is it a 1/2″ steel dow?

Thanks.