Live and Learn

Or, “Why I’m not a handyman.”

I threw $5 in the trash today. Well, not quite so literally, but it might as well have been.

See, I decided to see if I could weatherseal the front door a little better, so I bought some foam strips to tape onto the door frame. After I did one side, the door wouldn’t close anymore. So I ended up taking it all off. Threw it into the trash. I then went and got a thinner tape. Installed it. Door wouldn’t close again.

A light finally turned on and I went out the door onto the porch, closed the door, and observed how the door closed onto the frame. It turns out the door and the frame are not very square when closed. The top corner has quite a wide gap, while the bottom half is fits rather tightly against the frame. No wonder any amount of tape along the entire length caused the door to no longer close and latch.

I was able to leave most of the thinner tape on the frame by cutting away the area that was the most problematic. I then opened a new package of the thicker tape and used that around the top corner.