Hammering might be ok for shoes you don’t plan to keep long, or for people who live in places where they seldom walk, but as a New Yorker, I would never nail anything into my shoe. I once had a horrible cobbler do it and the next one complained so much about the first guy’s shoddy work! A cobbler will use glue to put the heel taps on, and then after you wear them down and come back, he can take them off and apply new ones. Cobblers can also make sure the heel tap fits perfectly, whereas a person at home probably won’t be able to. Plus, as you wear the heel tap down, those nails are going to scrape the floor!

My husband used to work at a dry cleaner, and he can tell countless sob stories of people who brought in items they tried to “home dry clean” using products like Dryel.  Once you use a product like that, if something goes wrong, there’s not much a dry cleaner can do.  Use with caution.