what might have worked

The one thing I'd have done differently than the movie...

Instead of wasting all those nails and wood on the doors, I'd have just nailed them into the frame itself. Well, except for the one closest to Ben's truck...that one I'd either push furniture/appliances/etc. in front of or nail it up like they originally had done. That way, if need be, I could fairly easily get THAT door open again and have one downstairs exit.

Then I would have used all of the extra nails and wood to make the windows far more secure. Hell, there might even have been enough extra wood to get them completely covered so that I could leave the lights on in the house without attracting attention(speaking of which, turning off all the outside lights would probably have been a good idea too).

Also, I don't understand why they didn't come up with a back-up plan to go upstairs if things got hectic. The stairs would have made for a perfect gauntlet to defend against zombies. Plus, the vantage point of being on the second floor means I could pick off zombies at my leisure since they apparently can't climb too well(lol) AND it would be easy enough to jump from the roof to make an escape should it come to that.

Combine all of that and I'd likely have a pretty secure house. Secure enough that I could search for the gas pump keys at my leisure and survive the night without too much trouble. When morning comes, THEN I'd try for the pump as it'd be much easier to see zombies coming in daylight.

Then again, it's easy to come up with things like this from the safety of the audience. No one really knows how they'd react if a ZA actually happened. Still, it's a fun thought experiment.

It'll be like Luke Duke and the other guy.
Really?
Yeah.
NO!

On top of this, if the zombies somehow got in the house, they could have nailed a door to the upstairs staircase. Not straight up to be pushed against, but at an angle so the zombies would have to try and crawl up the door but would fail because the angle would be to extreme.