Imagine going from being out to sitting at home all day every day. Looking around every day to the room you are now spending all your time in, would you be happy with what it looks like? 

A lot of people haven’t been. 

This is where “pandemic makeovers” start happening; rooms are being freshly painted, new furniture being put in, and new decorations up across the walls. This is a big project to take on. 

Senior Bailey Bennett  had specific goals for this process, as she had been thinking about it for a while. Bennett took the extra time afforded by online learning and transformed her room.

Looking through different places for inspiration, it came together. 

Bennett said, “I’ve been wanting to change my room for quite a while now, and since we had time with the pandemic it worked out well. I got inspiration from online pictures on sites like Pinterest!” 

None of this would have happened without the team effort of family.

“We hired someone to paint my room, had a relative put down the new flooring, and my entire family helped with the moving of furniture and organizing,” Bennett said.

Sophomore Charlie Bunker has been on the flip side of this. He has been with his family helping his brother to change his room. There had been some long overdue updates.

“We remodeled my brother’s room. It was childish and he wanted to redo it, so we painted it and took down some kids themed items,” Bunker said. 

Bunker was not the only family member helping his brother. This remodeling project also had a whole team working together on it.

Bunker said, “My parents and I helped him choose what he wanted and moved things around and helped him paint.”

Sophomore Josh Derosa worked on adding new furniture to a spare room. He saw an opportunity for changing a storage room to a spare room for family games and relaxation.

Moving big furniture can be a struggle, but Derosa was able to get the job done. 

“There wasn’t much challenge, but if I had to say something I think it was moving the bookshelf and desk because of the awkward shape and the size of them,” Derosa said. 

Although not all challenges one may face when tackling a big project are going to be physical, like moving furniture, or getting the coats of paint just right. 

It is true that control hasn’t been within our grasp during the course of the pandemic, although who would’ve thought that it would be modifying our homes that would help to give the feeling of control back to all of us again? 

English teacher Natalie Rebetsky said, “People, including me, felt out of control so this is one way to take control and feel better.”

Rebetsky renovated her whole unfinished basement. This helped to give better spaces for her and her husband to work from home and live at home more comfortably. 

“We decided that since we were both home all the time that we needed more space, because if I was working and my husband was watching TV there was no place else to go. We decided to use saved vacation money towards our basement renovations,” Rebetsky said. 

The pandemic itself could also be a challenge if you need outside help from different companies to complete the project. Socially distancing, wearing masks, and welcoming people into your home in a pandemic can be difficult. 

 “We did have a person who was willing to do it, but we had to go through extra steps because we wanted to be socially distanced. We had the basement closed off  with plastic sheeting, and this person would walk in through a different door and had a separate bathroom. This is one way that people stay safe by taking those extra steps to make sure social distancing is in place and there is as little contact as possible,” Rebetsky said.

While some were needing to demo what they already had in their rooms, others were just adding on. Adding new decorations, small pieces of furniture, just things to add a new feeling to the room. This is what Sophomore Alex Stuart took action on.

“I added a desk and chair to my room, and I took down some posters,” Stuart said. 

Senior Jordan Webb did the same thing: less renovating, more redecorating. 

Jordan Webb said, “It was already pretty organized. I didn’t redo my room. It was more about redecorating it.”

This can make the process a lot easier. All that would need to be done is figure out what needs to be bought, buy it, and put it all together!

“During quarantine, I added a floating shelf, cute baskets, and LED lights to my bedroom,” Webb said. 

LED lights have been nothing short of one of the biggest trends of the past few years. More teens than not have these LED light strips up around the top border of their room. 

We all know Home Depot: the store you can step in to get anything you need to build something, plant a garden, etc. During the pandemic, there has been an obvious increase in home rennovation, so does that mean business has boomed for Home Depot stores all around?

An employee of Home Depot said, “I would be remiss in saying there has been a certain amount of remodeling of rooms because people are free and forced. The largest part is Home Depot has been a service provider and open the whole time. It seemed for a while that people were bringing whole families and making the store visit an outing!”

Although the pandemic itself is the main factor for more business in the store whether it is because the family needed a new scene to visit for a few minutes, or to acutally purchase items for a project, it has also been hard to tell just how many more people are visiting in their free time.

“…it’s hard to judge because there were lines and number control (social distancing),  so it seemed like more people only because there were only a few at a time,” the Home Depot employee said.

When speaking of so many people purchasing new materials to rennovate, there have seemingly been no conflicts. On the small side, there are clearly going to be struggles when actually working on the project, although on a larger scale, what has been going on?

There was recently a situation in the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal is one of the world’s largest waterways. A large amount of vesels pass through carrying important goods on board.

Acoording to Fox Business, “Consumers could see price hikes for oil and gas, travel and even clothing as a direct result of the canal issue impacting certain supply chains just as people start to return to work and take vacations for spring break.” All of which could lead to affecting products within Home Depot or other stores when it comes to pricing or availability of items.

From placing a pretty new picture on the wall, to repainting, buying new furniture and placing new floors, quarantine has allowed, and kickstarted many new renovating and redecorating projects.