Help me heat my sitting room

[petesgirl]

Our home has an open floor plan with sitting room/kitchen/dining room all together. So we have 2 large windows plus a sliding glass door and a lot of cold air seeps in during the winter, making it hard to maintain a comfortable temp.
I know you can buy thermal curtains, but does anybody have experience with a particular brand, or any other ideas on how to keep the outside air from seeping in?

[nfowife]

How about wrapping the windows with shrink wrap- check out the 3m kit on amazon. It gets good reviews. I have the kit at home but haven't gotten around to doing it yet. It's a very popular in this region to do it!

[Mommy_Mea]

How about wrapping the windows with shrink wrap- check out the 3m kit on amazon. It gets good reviews. I have the kit at home but haven't gotten around to doing it yet. It's a very popular in this region to do it!

:yeahthat:

Our family room addition has ancient windows, and it isn't in our budget to replace them. DH wraps them with the plastic every winter, and it makes a HUGE difference. You can barely tell it is there.

When I was first out of college, I used to do that in our rentals. Ancient Boston houses with drafty windows, and we paid for heat, ouch!

[mikala]

How about wrapping the windows with shrink wrap- check out the 3m kit on amazon. It gets good reviews. I have the kit at home but haven't gotten around to doing it yet. It's a very popular in this region to do it!

Agreed, but I wouldn't even bother around a 2 year old unless yours has great impulse control around essentially a huge piece of shrink wrap. We'd like to cover a window in our house but little toddler pokey fingers make me think it's a lost cause this year.

We have both Eclipse and Target threshold thermal blackout curtains and I've been happy with both. There is definitely a blast of cold air when I open them each morning. Insulating blinds also help a lot and let more light through.

[petesgirl]

:yeahthat:

Our family room addition has ancient windows, and it isn't in our budget to replace them. DH wraps them with the plastic every winter, and it makes a HUGE difference. You can barely tell it is there.

When I was first out of college, I used to do that in our rentals. Ancient Boston houses with drafty windows, and we paid for heat, ouch!

Is it fairly easy to do then? And you can just remove it in the warmer months without any problems?

[khalloc]

Is it fairly easy to do then? And you can just remove it in the warmer months without any problems?

It is very easy to do. I used to do it in my apartment after college. I have a similar setup to you though, with an open floor plan now and I do not shrink wrap my windows anymore. My house isnt that old (built in 90s) and although we do have many large windows and then a 6' sliding glass door, I just think the shrink wrap looks ugly. But it does help with the heat loss, for sure! I guess I care about asthetics more now, but my house is also more energy efficient that the one I lived in after college.