Today I felt brave! Not only did I take on a challenging project, I also picked a lively pattern. Personally I love the Kentani pattern but I do understand it's not to everyone's taste. Never mind, it's my laundry, I do most of the washings in my household and colours make me happy! 

This is Part 1 in what will be a series of my laundry make over. In this post I will only describe new tips and tricks I've come across. For sticky back plastic basic instructions please read some of my other blog posts. This is what my laundry looked like before the makeover:

Step 1

First I would like to show you how to patch two pieces together. When I wrapped the laundry tub the width (45 cm) of the sticky back plastic film wasn't wide enough. In my case I had two options:

1. attach the new length where the patterns match together (as you do with wallpaper), or;
2. find a way to "hide" the overlap, without waiting for the continuous pattern to appear on the film again.

You might have guessed it already, I went for the later option. By doing this I didn't need to waste about half a meter of the sticky back plastic film.

The Kentani patchwork is marked by black lines. I decided to cut my new length next to the black line to make sure it looked like the patterned continued as before.

Step 2

The next thing I had to look out for was the outstanding button on my laundry. To get the sticky back plastic in the right position I cut a hole in the middle for the button to peak out. Once I attached this part of the film, I cut the hole bigger to the desired size with a sharp knife.

Step 3

Now my real challenge started. I had to pull the contact paper around a round corner and stretch the film. To make the film stretch without breaking it, I warmed it with a hair dryer on its coolest setting. I gently pulled and smoothed down the film to the surface. This step you have to take very carefully as you don't want to overheat the film nor overstretch it.

This is the final result of my laundry make over so far. I will soon do some alterations to it by:

1. adding black contact paper to the white parts (including the top area of the laundry tub),  or;
2. continuing with the Kentani pattern on the the white parts, or;
3. leaving as is.

I welcome your comments and thoughts on what you think I should do. :)

Lessons learned from this project

• when creating an overlap, find a way that works for your chosen pattern of sticky back plastic
• take extra care when heating and stretching the sticky back plastic to avoid overheating and over stretching.

Skill Level

This is an intermediate to advanced level project. It pays off to don't rush through each step.