For three years I begged my mom to let me paint and decorate the bedroom I share with my younger sister, Laura. I had a difficult time deciding on just the right colors.. At first I wanted it pink. Then I decided on purple, but then I thought how blue would be much better. Finally, I changed my mind to black. Predictably, my mom vetoed all of my color suggestions.

Finally in February, my warring mother and I signed a peace treaty over the colors the room would be. While I am a Coca-Cola addict, my sister is a certified Phillies fanatic, so we decided that our bedroom should be painted in colors that reflected both of our passions.

At long last, we finally set a date on a Friday after school to make the journey to Home Depot and lay the ground work for our plans. In the car, my sister and I could not stop chatting about how cool our new bedroom would look. Our excitement, however, was quickly snuffed out when it began to snow and a thick fog blanketed the roadways. The mixture of snow and rain pelleted the car windows so hard that I had to yell just to be heard. Mother Nature became my worst enemy when she forced my mom to turn around and head back to the safety of home. My mother tried to cure our disappointment with her promise that we could make the journey the next morning.


After breakfast we went to Home Depot. We picked out a vivid Coca-Cola red for my sister’s tall wooden dresser that we were going to paint. First we couldn’t decide on what color gray we were going to use. Some were too dark and others were so light, you could barely see them. We picked a deep gray color for the walls. It took a while for the woman to make the paint so while she did my mom and I looked around the store for paint brushes and sandpaper for the dresser. I always liked the smell of Home Depot. It smelled like freshly chopped wood and brand new paint.

Once the paint was ready to take home we left and stopped at Target across the street. We got vibrant red cotton blankets and sheets for our beds and red pillow cases to match. I had banished my bulky wooden dresser from my bedroom, it took up too much space. My mom picked out two white plastic closet storage units with drawers for all my clothes now that I don’t have a dresser. We bought new red hangers and a basket for my large collection of magazines. We also went to BJs for food shopping. We were about to leave when I spotted a tiny little red plastic Coca-Cola vending machine on sale. It was small and short but it was a real working vending machine. It can hold up to 12 cans of Coca-Cola. It was the last one so my mom got it for me, that was the most exciting thing I got all day. I kept fantasizing about what my room would look when it was finished. I was eager to run home to paint and put all my new things in our room, I wanted my room to be done so badly.

My mom drove home slowly, there was a thick layer of ice and snow blanketing the ground from the night before. When we arrived home we all jumped out of the car and ran upstairs. I quickly dumped everything in my brothers room and organized it because it was almost time to eat dinner. We quickly devoured our dinner and started on our room. First we covered all the furniture in plastic and pushed the two twin beds in the corner of the room with Laura’s dresser in the middle of the room, waiting to be painted. We painted the first layer of paint, the primer, onto the dresser that night. Laura and I took turns painting with the brush and the roller. We stayed up late working on it, when we were done applying the bubblegum pink primer on the dresser, my room was freezing and smelled strongly of paint fumes even though my mom had opened both windows. I slept in her room Saturday night because the paint was too strong.

Sunday we continued to paint the dresser and started on the walls. After the first layer of gray was on the walls and dried we added a second coat. After that first layer had dried I noticed how dark the gray was, I thought it would be much lighter but I still loved it. My room looked so different already. On Wednesday I was finally able to put my furniture and clothes back into our bedroom along with all the new stuff we had bought. I had been keeping my clothes in Richie's room and so was Laura. The bed was atrocious. Mine and Laura’s clothes were scattered around the room and piled onto Richie’s bed. I felt bad for taking over Richie’s room but our things would soon be gone and into our own room.

After everything was moved back into our bedroom it was finally finished. Laura’s bright red dresser was leaning up against one wall with our little t.v perched on top of our DVD player. Facing the dresser were our beds and in between our beds was a small school desk that held my vending machine, fully stocked with Coca-Cola. Laura had her baseball hats towering over the front of her bed and a silver metal Phillies logo hanging over her bed and I had a vintage Coca-Cola canvas painting hanging above my own bed. Next to Laura’s picture of the Phillies logo. My mother had put lights in the shape of baseballs on the wall. My mom put stickers around the baseball lights, making it look like it had been thrown into the wall, cracking it. My curtains also have vintage glass Coca-Cola bottles that light up, draped across the top of the sleek metal curtain rod. The first week or two you couldn’t get Laura and I out of our room, we loved it so much. My whole house was dull white but when you stepped into our room it was so colorful, so different from the rest of my house. It felt like it didn’t belong. After my room was done my mother told me that she was going to paint the rest of our house starting with Richie’s bedroom. I can’t wait to see how his room turns out.