Self-adhesive film for countertops

[Kahu]

Has anyone any experience of using self adhesive film on a laminate countertop? I want to do a cheap and cheerful reno of my 70's era kitchen until I can afford to rip it all out and start over.

The cheap, green laminate countertops are awful but investing in something new for a few years seems silly. Is a marble-look self adhesive film going to look similarly cheap and awful, albeit less green? Will it hold up to everyday family life for a year or two? Most importantly, is it a total nightmare to install?

I would be grateful if anyone has any words of advice - yays or nays, and installation tips would be very welcome. Thank you.

Do you mean sticky backed plastic? It is not designed to get wet or have hot things on and so will get wrecked pretty quickly.

The stuff I've seen is a fancier version of sticky backed plastic - it comes in a big roll sized for counter tops rather than those little rolls meant to line shelves.
I never put anything hot on my worktops anyway so not too concerned about heat.

I’ve done it in my kitchen for the same reasons you have. I used a wood effect one and it looks pretty decent, except for the edges that I made an arse of - I’m going to redo it after finding out how to finish the corners properly.

It’s qyite simple to do, but buy more then you think you’ll need and make sure you’ve got spare scalpels that are sharp enough. Also, get one of the special tools for getting rid of air bubbles!

Years back, when we had our first home and no money, we used thin cork tiles to cover an unsightly work top. They were easy to cut to shape and then we applied several coats of varnish to make them water and heat resistant . We dealt with the edges by nailing wood beading along it.
I don’t know if you can still get that type of cork as tiles or on a roll.

Ooh, I like the cork idea! Sounds like it would be fairly easy to do. It's the air bubbles that I'm worried about with the vinyl wrap - I have a feeling things could get very frustrating and sweary!

Could you go all American and tile it instead?

you can put laminate flooring on a worktop if you want.

But worktop is cheaper than you think

www.wickes.co.uk/Products/c/1000000?q=%3Aprice-asc%3Acategory%3A1000940%3ALength%3A3000+mm%3ALength%3A2000+mm&text=#

I did consider tile - my parents have it on their worktops but I have how grubby the grouting gets.

Wow, those Wickes prices are good, but I'm not in the UK and can't find anything that cheap here.

I am looking into pp's cork idea. I can get two sheets of 6'x3' cork for $40 so it's certainly affordable. Apparently cork worktops really are a thing, I just need to figure out how best to seal them.

Thanks everyone.

We sealed ours with several coats of clear varnish. It was back in the days of only one choice interior varnish. Did the job fine.