Room Tour Part 1

My desk

Crafting yourself the perfect room takes a while. You need time, space, money, and an a strong idea of what you want.

My old room space was pretty bad. I sat at a round desk in the corner of a room with barely enough desk space because I cluttered it with stuff that basically spent months, even years, gathering dust. I left myself no room for any space to do projects on and as a result, never did them.

(I somehow tolerated this for 4 years).

Sometime in late 2016 I'd decided enough was enough and I needed a new room setup. I spent some time watching setups, particularly those showcased by Techsource and I finally found the inspiration I needed to get started.

Today I wanted to showcase just the desk and how it's been going for me over the past year and a bit.

The desk I bought was a friend's old desk that he sold to me after he moved to Japan. It's a discontinued Ikea desk called the Galant. They stopped producing it in 2014.

The desk as assembled, as well as a new racing office chair I picked up (generic brand, nothing flash).

I had already settled on black and red as the main color scheme for the setup, dating back to 2015 when I built my PC, which just incidentally had a black and red aesthetic.

Setting up

I always wanted a versatile dual-monitor setup that allowed me freedom with where i could position the monitors as well as free up desk space beneath them. Initially I'd planned to put a soundbar at the back of the desk but this would be unsuitable if I wanted to use the monitors from the other side (part of the utility of the monitors being on arms), so I eventually opted to get a pair of speakers that were on the adjacent side of the room that allowed listening from both sides with no problems.

Here's a good look at the Ergotron Dual LX arms, as well as my old desk setup!

These arms were quite expensive (250 dollars off Amazon and the shipping was also high). I spraypainted them with a matte red powdercoat to help match the color. This was quite a hassle because there were so many parts of it that needed taping off!

At first there was nothing on the desk at all apart from the keyboard, mouse, lamp, phone and a controller . I made a strict point of keeping this desk as free of clutter as possible and only let things stay on there for a few days at most (whatever I was actively using at a given time).

The setup today?

You can see that not much has changed over the past year of use, and a few more things have been added.

I moved my air purifier from the floor to the desk to get it off the ground and closer to the 'breathing height' of the nose. I also added an Anker charging pad and an aroma diffuser on a red coaster. I also have a Playstation 4 now, so the controller lives on the desk when I'm charging it. I also added a tablet stand and now have a Galaxy Tab 10.1 and an Amazon Paperwhite 2. This was an impulse purchase that ended up being a great investment for just 2 dollars. I only wish it came in black!

Part of me wants to get a third monitor for crypto but it looks like I'm alright with two for now. I have a third output set to the TV now. I have this neat little trick that allows me to use the monitor as a "pseudo-third" monitor. By raising the PC monitor up, I can peer through the hole underneath it to see the TV whilst I'm sitting at my desk. It's great for when I'm doing multiple things on the computer at the same time:

In the next post I'll talk a bit about the versatility of the setup and how I make the most it!