Anti-Snag Door Foot

Due to a curiosity of home design, our house has an exterior door right next to our closet. This required the placement of a rug from the outside door to the kitchen. Unfortunately the closet door would always get snagged on the edge of the rug whenever it was opened. My legally-joined cohabitant (Wife) refused to let me grind down the bottom of the closet door (something about "This is a rental house") so I created the Rug Ride Along The Top (RATT). This is pretty short Instructable but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless :D

Step 1: Measurements

The two things to figure out are:

1) How high is the offending rug?

2) How wide/thick is your door?

The RATT stays hooked on the door by a combination of it's paperclip-like structure and a small lip that goes over the bottom edge of the door. The height of the rug will determine the upwards slope of the RATT's leading edge.

Step 2: Cut the Kydex

After you have your measurements figured out it's time to cut your kydex/heavy-duty plastic. I used a scrap piece so the length was already predetermined but the key thing to consider is to make sure that you have enough material to form both the front and back slopes, the clipping/springy bends on the tops, and the width of your door. After some testing I found that the gliding action of the rug pulled the RATT further down the door and away from where I needed it. I solved this by adding a small lip that catches on the outside of the door. Simply use shears to cut two small snips in the side along what will be the flat portion.

Step 3: Heat & Shape

Once you have your Kydex strip cut out the next step is to break out the heat gun and mold it into shape. This is pretty much a one-step process but there are a few tricks that I found worked well. To ensure that the bottom section remained flat I used two pieces of wood to act as a vice/fulcrum to control the bending. I also took advantage of the fulcrum to bend the lip section up. The rest of the shaping was done by hand (I recommend heavy leather or canvas gloves as the Kydex should be quite hot at this stage). I made the top section a bit more narrow than the bottom to help with the clipping action.

Step 4: Revel in Your Triumph

Place the RATT on the door and try it out! If it doesn't fit quite right it's simply a matter of returning to the workbench and hitting with some more heat and molding. Ideally the rug should be subducted (Woohoo! There's 5th grade geology paying off) by the slope of the RATT's leading edge and the door, albeit with some friction, should slide across the top. This was a 15 minute project so I'm sure there's room for improvement but it's worked pretty well so far. Cheers!