Vintage hamper makeover with electrical tape

I don't usually get to do a lot of furniture makeovers since we live in a fully furnished rental, but I always feel such excitement, when I get do restyle something in our home. Now, yes, it's a hamper, but we'll call in furniture anyway. I guess, technically it is :).

The story of this hamper is that it belonged to my parents, and it was the hamper in our home when I was growing up, up until we moved to our house. I have distinct memories of this hamper, which makes giving it a makeover the more enjoyable.

The makeover itself was super easy, though it was a little time-consuming. Or, rather, tedious would be a better word. I got the idea of using electrical tape for this restyle from A Beautiful Mess. I've been wanting to try this method ever since I saw this washer and dryer makeover on their blog. Finally, when my Dad pulled out the hamper from our attic, I knew it was the perfect project for it.

 I used: 

• a plastic weave hamper
• black electrical tape
• scissors
• a pen
• books

The process itself was easy. First I taped every other row on the lid, leaving about 2cm of extra on both ends to be able to push it between the surrounding strip. Then I taped every 2 rows on the rest of the hamper. Since I knew my hamper would be facing a wall, I didn't really bother taping in the back.

When the taping was done, I cut all the taped rows in all the places where it crossed the vertical weave. Once cut, I tucked all the edges under the vertical strip. It was pretty easy to move the strips, so the tucking was easy.

The last step was to makes sure the tape was secure and following the pattern of the original plastic strips. So I took a pen and started pushing the tape into the lines on the plastic with the tip. At first I used my nail (like in the picture above), but then I realized that left some marks here and there on the tape, so I switched to a pen, which was smoother. Since the plastic had been weaved to a wooden frame, which didn't support it at all places, I used large books and pushed them against the plastic from the inside, so I could then push the lines in with the pen from the outside.

Love how this turned out! Much more modern, and the tape covered all the bigger stains on the plastic, as well as the rusted nails on the last strip of plastic. Also, I'm so glad I did the tape every 2 rows on and not every other row like on the lid, since you can now get a  better feel for the weave as well. I ran out of tape, or otherwise I would've taped the top 2 rows as well to hide the nail heads.

What do you think about the makeover?

Thanks for letting me share!
xo // Hanna