Multitrade Home Repair

Weather sealing doors is not always straight forward. There are different makers of door shoes and weather seals for around doors and different designs as well. There are also different materials that are used for weather sealing doors, some use vinyl and others use silicone. I prefer to go with silicone for weather sealing doors because it’s a softer material and won’t crack or decay as soon as vinyl will from sun and other elements. Many times, there’s a pitch or slope to the threshold that you’re meeting with the edge of the door seal. I like to match this by cutting an angle on the end of the seal. Also, I either miter where the corner of the door seals meet or I fashion them in such a way that the seal is continuous, so as to get a better seal. There are also ways that I cut the door shoe, which is the weather seal on the bottom of the door, to get a better seal with it. You need to make sure though, that when you install a door shoe, that the threshold is higher than the floor or carpet adjacent to it, otherwise the door shoe will drag or not allow the door to open at all. If this is your situation, then you will need to either replace the threshold with a thicker one to raise the height or shim it up. The only thing is that you don’t want your threshold to slope inwards towards the door, or else you can have water leakage. Weather sealing doors is one of my specialties and my customers are always pleased with both the finished appearance as well as how well it seals the door from drafts getting through.