Easy DIY Winterizing Part III – Door Shoes

If you’re like us, you have a great little house that has its fair share of drafty corners and cracks.  Maybe you even have cheaper windows than you’d prefer, possibly a vaulted ceiling that sucks warm air up and far away from where you want it, and maybe you also store your paint in the basement like we do because your garage gets cold enough in winter to freeze anything stored in it.

Well, as relatively new homeowners (of a year and a couple months), we’re still learning how to seal up the house and deal with all those little energy suckers.  After Part I and Part II, we’re now onto Part III of my Winterizing Series.

A “door shoe” is the funny little piece of weather stripping that is attached to the bottom of your exterior doors.  It looks something like this:

No, wait.  That’s what it looks like if it needs to be REPLACED:  the rubber fins are brittle and/or permanently smashed, and maybe the front edge has a tear in it (or two.)

Once again, I would never have thought about the door shoes or known they could/should be replaced if our storm door installer hadn’t pointed it out to me while he was here.

While at Walmart the other day, we found a replacement door shoe.  Unfortunately, it was the wrong kind, so it went back, and we got the right kind of shoe from Home Depot for $7.

The door came off the hinges,

we removed the old shoe, and nailed in the new shoe, 

put the door back up.

And it was that easy.  Done.  And It should keep drafts and dirt out much better than the last one.

Do your doors need “new shoes” too?

Have a great week!