Necessity - Mother of Invention

About 2 yrs ago the weather stripping inside my outer doors, front and back doors, began to disintegrate and fall apart. My house, which had otherwise always been well insulated and relatively inexpensive to heat/cool now had a noticeable gap around 3 sides of the front and back doors. The gap was such that I could see light through both doors and, holding my hand some 6in from the gap, could readily feel the icy air streaming in.

At the time, I was in a great deal of pain following a car accident, enough so that the air transfer at the doors was of minimal interest to me. Later I made a hurried attempt at fixing the front door. I purchased a new weather stripping of the kind that had been in the door to begin with, but upon trying to install it, I found that I had purchased the wrong size. Issues with the alignment of the bolt lock make the problem of determining the proper size for the weather stripping more complicated that it otherwise should be. Frustrated, I never got around to buying the correct size.

Later still, I hired a fix-it guy to handle a list of things around my house, but the list was too long, and he didn't get to the weather stripping before the day was over. As I not only had to pay the guy and buy the materials but also had to take the day off from work to stay with him and 'supervise', I never got around to hiring him out again to finish the list, and the weatherstripping remained undone.

More recently, unemployed, broke, and pinching every penny until it screams, I found myself caught in one of many dilemmas. With area temperatures running some 15-20 degrees below normal for more than a month now, cold air is rushing into my house through those door gaps causing my heat pumps to run overtime just to maintain a chilly 64 degrees. On the other hand, I don't have the money to hire someone to fix the doors now. I really can't even afford the proper weather stripping to do it myself, and then there's the problem of getting the wrong one and having to pay more to get another one and...

The other day in the middle of an ice storm with 2 heat pumps running non-stop, I became determined to fashion a temporary solution to block the air flow through the doors. That's when I got creative. Knowing that air is really the very best insulator we have and that cardboard traps a lot of air, I took a few cardboard panels from cut-down boxes out of my recycling area and with door, cardboard, and box cutter all in hand fashioned a strip that fit nicely both in terms of thickness and depth. I glued this to the inside door frame, the area where the weather stripping should go and verified that the door would still close and lock properly. I then cut and installed additional strips as needed to complete the route around the inside door frame.

When the door is closed, my cardboard weather stripping is not visible. When open, it can be seen, but I figure it's not a terrible eyesore especially when considered against the alternative of leaving that gap in the door. Moreover, now when the door is closed I can no longer see light between the door and facing, nor can I feel any cold air rushing in. Frankly, I LOVE it.

I did both doors at a cost of $0, just some cardboard destined for the recycling center and some glue I had on hand. This will undoubtedly save me untold $$ in heating and A/C bills. As I see it, the only possible problem now is that it may be difficult to remove when I'm ready to change it out for the proper weather stripping at some point in the future. I'm not going to invest much energy worrying about that now though.

So, what do you think of my creative and frugal solution? Potential problems I failed to consider? Also, what about you? Have you had one of those moments of necessity in which you found your own frugal solution to a problem?