When COVID hit, I set up my work from home area in my bedroom—my childhood bedroom no less. The last time I had redecorated it was about five years ago when I was in college. The room had become a mix of the end of college times and now me trying to do my job remotely. Not to mention the coral paint on the walls was really starting to get to me after spending hours upon hours in the room, aside from just sleeping.

So I decided to completely re-do my bedroom! I had 2 weeks off in the end of December from work, and I figured that would be a great time to do it since I would have to sort of re-arrange my room and move things around that would mess up my working schedule.

I spent an entire Sunday afternoon in the beginning of the month looking online at furniture. This was the first time I was getting all new furniture for my room. I started looking at Raymour and Flanigan, but it was all really expensive. I then went to Wayfair and IKEA online, but what I was finding there was in low stock or out of stock, and I didn’t want to order things from different places and have to keep track of the orders. My mom suggested Target, and I was like, why didn’t I think of that before?

I ordered all of my furniture pieces from Target, which are listed below. Mostly everything came in in about a week; the nightstand came in a week after everything else, but that’s fine because it was small.

Then came the decision of paint color. I think literally anything else would have looked better than the coral. I decided on light gray, and my parents stopped by Sherwin Williams one morning while on their errands and pick up about half of the gray paint swatches that were available. Surprisingly, I was able to narrow down the color I wanted pretty quickly; it’s called “Front Porch.”

So let’s get started! Below you’ll find a list of everything I bought and a day-by-day breakdown of the work I did.

Items purchased:

• 60″ 4 shelf bookshelf (Target)
• Vertical dresser [2] (Target)
• Computer desk (Target)
• 3’x5′ area rug (Target)
• Metal bed (Target)
• Bed skirt (Target)
• Table lamp (Target)
• Bedding quilt set (Target)
• Nightstand (Target)
• 18″x18″ throw pillows [2; 1 in navy, 1 in gray] (Target)
• 1 gallon of paint in “Front Porch” (Sherwin Williams)
• Rotating surge protectors [2] (QVC)
• Plastic bins [6 in gray] (Amazon)

A big shoutout to my parents for helping me along the way with painting and putting together the furniture. And another big shoutout and thanks to the UPS and FedEx folks and our mailman who delivered everything. The dresser boxes were wicked heavy, and the desk and bookshelf boxes were awkward to carry.

Before photos

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Saturday, December 12

I spent the afternoon cleaning out my room. I tackled my desk, tops of dressers, dresser drawers, and closet. I ended up with two full trash bags and one bag full of clothes for donations. I’m the type of person who will just shove stuff into drawers or my closet because I don’t want to deal with them, but now I actually have to deal with the stuff. I made sure I got rid of stuff I don’t use anymore or don’t need because I was getting slightly different furniture, so I wanted to make sure I only had the essentials.

Monday, December 14

I spent two hours taking everything off the walls—including the curtains and curtain rods—and realized how annoying it is to unscrew things from walls. Some things were hung up on nails or screws, but other things were hung up on drywall hooks that were jammed so far into the wall that I had to use pilers to get them out of the wall.

After taking everything down, the room already felt bigger. And a bit echoey. There are a handful of things that I plan to put back up, some things are moving downstairs for storage, and I threw a few things out. The pieces I want to put back up will wait until after I get everything built and put back.

Tuesday, December 15

Time to fill in the holes on the walls with putty. It all seemed like fun and games until I realized that there were 46 holes to fill. FORTY-SIX. So I put on a podcast and got to work.

One of my weird talents is puttying, and I didn’t really mind doing it; I think I spent less than an hour doing the entire room.

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Wednesday, December 16

Time to sand all 46 of the holes. To prevent all of the dust from floating around my room, my mom helped and held up the vacuum underneath as I sanded. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would but it was just awkward to move with the vacuum around the room. I’m just glad I didn’t have to putty and sand a second time.

Friday, December 18

Time to clean, dust, and vacuum. I emptied out the things in my desk and from the tops of my dressers into bins so there was less stuff when we got ready to paint. All of those things were going back into my bedroom, so I put the boxes in the living room for now. I then pulled each furniture piece out from the wall—so my dressers, nightstand, and bed—and vacuumed behind them. I definitely vacuumed up a large dust bunny from under my bed.

Saturday, December 19 & Sunday, December 20

This weekend was dedicated to painting. My mom helped me out but I did most of it. We started by going around the trim and windows with the gray before going back with a roller. Tunes we listened to included Christmas music, Taylor Swift, and both Mamma Mia movie soundtracks.

We did the first coat on Saturday—which took about five hours—and I mostly took care of the second coat on Sunday morning. That afternoon my dad helped me with the bed. We had to take apart the daybed I had—he actually made it for me when I was younger—and put together the new bed frame.

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Monday, December 21-Wednesday, December 23

After spending three days building furniture, I’ve realized I hate building furniture. I had to put together two dressers, a bookcase, and a desk. I had some help from my mom to build the dressers and the desk.

We set up in the dining room so we’d have more space to build, and, of course, that meant the pets got involved since we were on the ground. They weren’t all that much help…

Pieces ranked hardest to build to least:

1. Desk
2. Bookcase
3. Dressers

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Once I moved the new furniture in and put some of my stuff back, like clothes in the drawers and things on my desk, there already seemed to be more space in the room. The iMac desktop on the desk is actually my work computer, so if/whenever I go back to the office, it’ll go back with me.

Monday, December 28

I spent most of the day filling in the bookcase, with books (obviously), little wooden signs, fairy lights, and other things I used to keep on my desk but now have a new home. The nightstand I ordered with all of the other furniture was scheduled to arrive that day, and it did. I assembled it by myself in my room, along with the lamp I had also bought.

Tuesday, December 29

I ordered small plastic bins from Amazon at the end of last week and they were delayed a day—I had flashbacks to Amazon losing a yoga mat I ordered back in April—but they came in Tuesday afternoon. I used those to organize items on my desk since it only has one drawer and two open shelves.

Wednesday, December 30

The very last thing I had to do was put a few things back up on the walls. My dad helped me out with that.

And then I was finally done!!!

After photos

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It feels SO good to know that I accomplish this on my own in less than a month from start to finish. My parents did help me out here and there with painting and furniture building, but I did most of the hard work myself. The room came out just like how I wanted it to, and I’m happy all of the furniture pieces fit and look good together.

Throughout the process, I obviously took photos but I also took time lapse videos so at the end I could put together a before and after video of all of the work. You can check that out here.