My $40 window insulation kit was a total waste on my old Lakewood apartment

I live in one of those older duplexes on the west side near Lakewood Park, and my upstairs bedroom windows are basically single-pane ice sheets in winter. Last month I grabbed a popular shrink-film kit from the hardware store for about 40 bucks, thinking it'd finally stop the draft. Spent a whole Saturday afternoon carefully cutting and heat-gunning the film to each window frame, felt like a pro. But then the tape started peeling off within two weeks, and the film sagged so bad it looked like a plastic bag stuck to the glass. The draft barely changed, and my gas bill was still $180 higher than last December. I think the problem is my old window sashes are too uneven for that tape to grab. Anyone else in an old west side house find a better fix for drafty windows that actually works?

2 comments

2 Comments

lilycraig1mo ago

My $40 shrink film kit ended up looking like a sad, wrinkled plastic bag caught in a windstorm. I swear the tape they include is specifically designed to fail so you buy the fancy stuff separately. After two weeks my windows looked like a craft project gone wrong from a kindergarten class. Glad I'm not the only one who got bamboozled by that garbage. Did you at least get a laugh out of peeling it all off?

tylermurray1mo ago

Those old duplex windows are brutal, the tape can't grip that uneven wood worth a damn. Rope caulk is your friend for the gaps around the sashes themselves, way cheaper and it squishes into all the weird spaces. Then grab some of that heavy clear plastic sheeting from the hardware store and a box of pushpins instead of tape, just staple or pin it tight right into the window frame. The shrink film works a lot better if you buy the removable double-sided tape separately too, the stuff they include is always garbage.