Room revamp

Last week I began revamping my room. Previously, I had a sofa and a full HD tv as a computer moniter. Coupled with the Roccat Sova, a sofa keyboard and mouse setup, I played games on my PC from the comforts of my sofa.

Now, I decided to revamp my entire room and go back to using a desktop. I bought all my furniture from Ikea, some paint, and went with cleaning my room, removing all unwanted furniture, repainting part of my room and assembling all the furniture needed for my new computer desktop. Oh and I also got myself a brand new 27inch Dell 1440p IPS minitor.

This was my setup before. With my gaming PC on the left, a pair of shelves flanking my TV. It’s acutally a very comfortable setup to game. I love my sofa. And the fact that I have a room big enough to fit a two-seater sofa makes this setup pretty unique. In the middle, the Roccat Sova, keyboard system for sofa use.

It took me a couple of days to remove all the furniture and the the stuff you see in the first image. After emptying my room (except for the bed, which sat at a corner) I suddenly realised how dirty my wall was. I got myself a small bottle of paint but realised I couldn’t find the same original color that was previously painted. I had to choose a color that closely matches the original and got paint named ‘Mocha’. The original colour was ‘Cuppuccino’ Close enough. Oh and I had to patch up those hideous holes with white plaster.

Painting done. The colour was quite close to the original. Thankfully. I had to coat the wall with white paint first for greater colour consistency and to ensure that the old paint colour does not affect the new one. The picture above looked washed out but that was because of the bright fluorescent lightbulbs.

The colour is more presentative to what I personally see. The furniture is an Ikea hack. To make this desk, you just have to get a large kitchen tabletop and place on top of Alex office drawers. The drawers came in white or gray. I chose the gray, because it reminded me of space-gray found on iphones and Macbooks. I love the walnut color of the kitchen tabletop. It has this high quality and luxurious look to it, although in actauly, its not a single piece of solid wood. Rather, its actually some kind of compressed chipboard. But still, that piece of wood you see there is super solid and heavy. You definitely need to person to carry that piece of wood around.

The cables looked messy, but trust me, it is much better that having it on the floor, criss-crossing each other. The Signum cable management from Ikea is an excellent addition to any desk if cable management is a problem. Elevating it above the floor makes the table underneath so much neater. Out of sight, out of mind. Installing the Signum requires power tools as you need to drill holes into the wood to hang as such. It is recommended to drill and install before placing the kitchen tabletop on the Alex office cabinets.

And now comes my favourite part of the revamp. Putting everything in its rightful place. The gaming PC, the larger-than-expected speakers, PS4 console, and my new Dell monitor. After placing everything I needed on the desk, I realised that I had less space than I expected. When I bought the kitchen tabletop from Ikea, I initially thought this 1.86m long wood was super huge. However, after placing all the things on the table, I realised that it is actually perfect.

My final set-up from different angles. Took my an entire week from purchasing the furniture, to assembly, to cleaning, moving of old furniture, and room painting. It has truly been a tiring, but hugely satisfying week. My over vision for what my new desktop should look like has finally been realised.

There are a couple of changes that I will be making in the near future. For one, the Roccat Sova will be replaced by a tenkeyless keyboard. The mouse and keyboard will be placed on a Satechi Mat and Mate base that will serve as a mousepad as well. That way, I will save more space and make the set-up even cleaner. Currently while the Roccat Sova works just as well as on the desk (simply remove the 4 paddings below) it looks rather bulky on my desk. That will change when the keyboard and the mat arrives in the coming days.