Galaxies are surrounded by sizeable gas reservoirs which host a significant amount of metals: the circum-galactic medium (CGM). The CGM acts as a mediator between the galaxy and the extra-galactic medium. However, our understanding of how galaxy mergers, a major evolutionary transformation, impact the CGM remains deficient. We present a theoretical study of the effect of galaxy mergers on the CGM: We use hydrodynamical cosmological zoom-in simulations of a major merger selected from the Illustris project such that the z=0 descendant is a Milky Way-like galaxy, and then re-simulated at a 40 times higher mass resolution. We include post-processing ionization modelling. This work demonstrates the effect the merger has on the characteristic size of the CGM, its metallicity and the predicted covering fraction of various commonly observed gas-phase species, such as H I, C IV and O VI. We show that merger-induced outflows can increase the CGM metallicity by 0.2-0.3 dex within 0.5 Gyr post-merger. These effects last up to 6 Gyr post-merger. While the merger increases the total metal covering fractions by factors of 2-3, the covering fractions of commonly observed UV ions decrease due to the hard ionizing radiation from the active galactic nucleus. The case study of the single simulated major merger presented in this work demonstrates the significant impact that a galaxy interaction can have on the size, metallicity and observed column densities of the CGM (Hani et al. in prep).