DIY Car Wash

J is a huge fan of carwashes and cars.  He’s always asking my husband to take him to the car wash.  Now, we don’t really need the car washed every day, so I decided to make J his own carwash.

It was fairly simple to do.  I didn’t take pics along the way because I did most of it at night and I just kind of improvised my way through it.  But, here are the basic steps I used.

Materials:

• Cardboard box
• Brown wrapping paper (postal paper)
• Tape
• 2 toilet paper tubes
• Dowel
• Razor blade (X-Acto Knife) or scissors
• 2 Colors of felt
• Hot glue gun
• Markers to decorate

Steps I took:

• Glued down the flaps of the box to close it up.
• Measured and cut out rectangles for the entrances and exits.
• Cut holes on the side of the box for the dowel to fit through.
• Wrapped box in wrapping paper
• Cut the pre-cut rectangles out of the wrapping paper.  I made and X with the X-Acto Knife and glued down the flaps to the box to make it look cleaner.
• Cut felt in rectangles so just long enough that when glued to the toilet paper tubes it barely hits the bottom of the box, and just as wide as the tubes.  I made 4 of each color (2 per tube)
• Cut slits in felt.
• Glued top of felt onto toilet paper tube.
• Cut dowel down so that it’s still long enough to be threaded through both holes in the box and leaves enough left over so that the child can spin it.
• Inserted dowel through the holes in box, threading the tubes onto the dowel before
• Ok, this is where it got tricky.  My husband and I tried to find the best way of attaching the tube to the dowel.  I wanted the tubes to spin just like they do at the car wash.  My very inventive husband found some screws just long enough to go through the tube and screw into the dowel.  He was carefully able to secure the tubes to the dowel. Now, it spins!
• Decorate!

I hope the instructions make sense and show just how easy it was to make.

J now has a new favorite way of playing with all his cars.  He’s having a blast with it!

I’d love for you to let me know what you think.  Come on over to Facebook and Twitter to see what else we’re up to!