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We are so proud of this extreme dorm room diy makeover. Khoa, My bonus daughter, is an RA now, which means she gets her own dorm room. Exciting, right?!
The downside is she lives in the oldest housing building on campus. And it’s an old campus.
Cinder block walls, awful carpet, 20 plus year old paint. It felt like a prison cell.
Here, take a look for yourself at these before pictures!
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As you can see, it’s a large space. There’s a ton of closet space and natural lighting. So we had that going for us.
After months of planning, DIY’ing and trying to make our schedules fit, we finally had two weekends in a row to commit to this thing. And the results are not disappointing!
I’ll leave links to the DIY’s throughout this post as we go along.
Here’s the makeover if you’d like to watch the video. Otherwise scroll down for the extreme dorm room makeover reveal!
Single Dorm Room Layout
First, a quick layout of the land.
When you first walk in, there’s a small room with a closet, sink and mirror on one side and an empty corner at the other.
Through the next doorway there’s a study room. It has a desk, large window and a full wall of closets.
There’s a small hallway from there that leads into the bedroom where there’s the bed, dresser and another small closet. You won’t want to miss the bedroom reveal!
Single Dorm Room Entryway Makeover
The empty corner in the entryway was the perfect spot for a little kitchen nook.
We put this wire shelf in the corner for a coffee bar. There’s a cake stand and 2 decorative trays from the Target dollar spot as well as a few Dollar Tree Baskets for storage.
The coffee mugs and candy jar are from Target as well.
I picked up two of these little rugs from 5 Below and placed them together for this space.
There’s a mini fridge with her Keurig on top.
Next to the fridge there’s a smaller wire shelf with more storage for snacks.
The leaf decor is from 5 Below. I made the chalk painted mirrors in a recent DIY video. They’re from Dollar Tree.
I love how this little corner brings life to the entrance of her dorm room right as you walk in.
We didn’t get much done on this other side of the entryway. I had planned on doing contact paper on the countertop like I did in my kitchen.
But we did add a few things. Khoa calls that closet the Shrek outhouse because of the mirror lol. I picked that up at 5 Below.
Her little succulents are on the shelf and we added matching hand towels and a rug.
The Beta fish tank is on that counter as well.
The study area was large and lacked purpose. Khoa is a social butterfly and I knew she’d have friends over regularly.
While she is using these closets for storage, she doesn’t need daily access to them. So we added a seating area in front of them.
The saucer chairs, mirror, rug and throw blanket are from Walmart. The blow up ottoman, throw pillows and round rug are from 5 Below.
Single Dorm Room Study Room Makeover
We hung these quotes on the wall to the right. Those are from another YouTube tutorial I did recently.
The desk sits on the wall opposite the sitting area. We hung the agate hooks from DT here as well as a metal succulent sign from DT and a wooden one from Walmart.
I made the memory board to go above her desk. If you’d like to see how I made it, check out the YouTube video of the dorm room makeover.
We wanted to mainly decorate the wall above the desk, leaving her desk fairly free of clutter.
The lamp from Walmart and a couple of little trinkets from DT are the only things we added to the top of the desk.
Before moving on to the bedroom, we have this last little area of wall space on the left side of the doorway.
I made these DIY hexagon planter shelves with faux succulents in another recent YouTube tutorial. I was excited to run across these hexagon cork boards at Target, they go together so well!
Extreme Single Dorm Room Bedroom Makeover
Let’s just take a quick look back at this bedroom before the makeover.
I want the awfulness of it fresh on your minds…
Can you believe this is the same room?!
From jail cell to Bohemian dreamland!
The bed set is from Amazon, and I picked up some throw pillows from Walmart to match.
The wall tapestry and lights are from Amazon as well. I love the way everything compliments each other.
Khoa loves color, especially pastels. She’s a bright, fun person and I wanted to reflect that. I also wanted to keep this a somewhat neutral, calming space.
I think we accomplished that.
We made DIY curtain rods from Dollar Tree items in the last tutorial. Those are hanging in the study as well as this bedroom.
We used white twin flat sheets as curtains and strung faux ivy across the top of the rod.
For faux ivy, it actually looks pretty amazing!
I made another memory board to go above the dresser. As you can tell, Khoa loves photography. I wanted her to have ample space to display her work and her memories.
We added a few trinkets to the dresser as well. The silver Buddha and white bowl are from 5 Below. The floral hexagon boxes are from DT. She already had everything else.
Extreme Dorm Room Makeover Before And After Photos
I’m still so blown away by the difference between these before and after photos.
It’s months of planning, lots of shopping and a few DIY’s finally coming to fruition.Â
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