window shrink wrapping 101

motivation:
80-year-old drafty house with bad windows. Outside temps below 20 F
with high winds seem to be oozing into the house. Why look! The curtains are moving.

ingredients:
special sheets of plastic (clear)
double-sided sticky tape, approx 1/2" wide, endless length, with white plastic paper on one side so it's usuable.

action:
Put sticky tape down so that it runs along all four sides of window pane with no gaps. The trick is to make sure the whole window, including as much of the ledge as possible, is covered. The sheet of plastic will prove to not be large enough and you'll have to reapply the tape.

Pull off protective white top layer on tape, accidentally detaching the tape from window. Try to reattach tape to wood and not your fingers, then pick out dog hair that gets caught on now-exposed, twisted sticky tape.

Take big sheet of plastic and try to attach it to sticky tape. Fail. Pull it off and try again, only this time using a new, unripped piece of plastic. Settle for crooked, badly wrinkled, big sheet of plastic covering entire window. Leave white plastic tape cover trash lying around so that everyone appreciates how much work you've been doing.

Turn hair dryer onto high. Aim it at big sheet which soon looks worse and gets even wrinklier. Stay patient. Continue to aim hair dryer at plastic. After about 20 minutes, the plastic is taut and almost clear over the window. Magic! Really.

Drafts are considerably reduced, but the little edges of plastic extending beyond the sticky tape continue to flutter, and will do so for the rest of the winter. You hope it's heat rising from the radiator, but suspect it's a draft where the window meets the wall. (Sheets of plastic aren't big enough to attach to wall as you learned in first step.)

solution:
Get a few good book contracts so you can buy new windows that consist of more than a single sheet of glass, wood and caulk.

reality:
oops, it's concert time....