Hey what’s up, Alex here! The type of video that I look forward doing
the most every year is a desk makeover tour. I really enjoy doing desk setup and this is
what I will consider to be the final look of the study room. From my last home office makeover video, I
have shifted one of the desks out from the study room to create a space for my work and
console gaming. And for quite a long period of time, the study
room I will consider to be in a pretty bad state, doesn’t feel good or comfortable
ins
ide. This space will be mainly for my other half,
her working from home and some gaming. I will be only coming in when I need to edit
my videos or at night when I just want to hang around in the living room area. So it’s time to change things up. I don’t intend to spend too much on new
furnishings, and so it’s going to be a trip to ikea. The plan is to reuse the existing standing
desk legs since they are all still working fine, and just get a kitchen top from Ikea
to act as the table top. This i
s a very popular desk hack that I have
always wanted to try out. Of course, I am going to get the Alex drawer,
just one at the side since I have some space for storage. I also like to try doing a window settee,
I think it will make the space look a lot more cosy. Lastly, I got a bunch of items from the marketplace
which you can spot them later in the video. So first up, I decide to assemble the furniture
first. For the window settee, I got the Nordli drawer
series. Initially I plan to use 4 big
drawers and
2 small drawers, with a remaining gap of 20cm. Then I realize it’s a very awkward 20cm gap which is too
small to realistically put anything there. In the end, I decided to return back the 2
small drawers and use that space to put a big plant instead. To make the window settee look more seamless
from wall to wall, I went to get an additional top and bottom piece of the drawer, luckily
ikea sold them separately as part of the Nordli series. I used a handsaw to cut it so that it would
f
it just nicely. One interesting thing I realize about their
wood is - you only find the wood at the sides, in the middle is just made up of cardboard. With that, the base goes wall to wall and
overall looks much better. Assembling the Alex drawer is quite time consuming,
but at least it is so much easier doing it in my gym room with the rubber mat protection. I got a couple of these desk organisers which
fit pretty nicely for the Alex drawer. Once these are done, then come the table top
which I
will need to carefully plan out before drilling the screws in. One of the reasons why I want to change the
table top is because the depth of the omnidesk is fixed at 76cm which I find is too big. But this one is just 63.5cm. Because of the depth, I will have the legs
flashed all the way to the front, in order to make space for the cable management tray
and power strip. I am reusing back the existing power strip,
but for cable management, I bought the advance bar from omnidesk as it is able to ex
tend
more than 1m. One of the things you need to plan ahead is
the size of the power adapters that you are going to plug in and make sure there is enough
space for them. In my experience, I know the LED light strips
come with big adapters, so time to unbox that first. This time round, I decided to try out the
smart light strips from Philips Hue. They tick all the checkboxes for me, runs
on zigbee, integrates well with smartThings and home assistant, able to set multi colors,
but more about it la
ter as I just want to make sure there is space for the power adapter. Eventually, this is how I will place the power
strip and cable management bar, then it’s time to drill in all the screws. This is relatively easy if you have the right
tools, I also manage to get omnidesk to send me a new set of screws as the existing ones
are already rusty. I then stick in the LED light strips. I have quite a number of comments in my smart
home videos asking how to install these smart light strips. It’s reall
y very easy, just literally peel
off the adhesive tape, and stick it at the back of the desk. One thing I like about the Philips hue strip
is that it comes with a diffuser, so the lights will be very evenly spread out. The table is 1.86m long, so I needed some
help to bring the desk upright. First thing I want to test out is the standing
mechanism whether it is working fine. If you look back at all my desk setup, I will
always include a LED light strip behind because it really looks so good. Bec
ause the desk is going to be very near
to the wall, you won’t be able to see such uniform brightness without a diffuser. Now it is time to put everything together
- the PC, monitor, peripherals and some interesting devices I got here. It took me a long time to research the products
and decide on the right one for this setup. I am going to fast forward all the unboxing
and straight away show you the final setup. Frankly speaking, I am so pleased with this
final look. I think I like this even more
than my own
home office setup. Let’s talk about the chair first, one of
the most important things in a setup that you shouldn’t overlook. This is the steelcase leap, steelcase is one
of the very popular global brands for office chairs. The savings from getting ikea furnishing probably
all goes to this chair. This costs about 2k SGD with the headrest,
pretty expensive for a chair but as you age older especially approaching 40, you won’t
mind spending a little more to get a good chair to look aft
er your body. This is a fabric chair with different types
of fabric options for you to choose. There are also different colors for you to
pick but very limited choices here in Singapore as compared to in US. What I have here is the cogent material, in
full black for the frame and fabric. The cogent is smoother and also feels cooler. Overall the chair is super comfortable, the
way the back support is designed feels like it wraps around your back nicely, everything
is highly adjustable for the sea
t and armrest but not the headrest which is probably my
only complaint. Fabric is a little hotter compared to leather
or mesh especially with the crazy weather now, but shouldn’t be a problem if you have
AC on or like my case the desk is directly under the ceiling fan. I also got a ikea footrest here to kind of
try out whether I would like having a footrest, so far I find myself using it pretty frequently. We actually took quite some time to decide
on a chair that we both find comfortable to sit
in. We tested almost all the highly reviewed chairs
here in Singapore, maybe in my next video I can do a tier list of all the chairs I tested,
let me know in the comments if that is something that you will be interested to watch. Moving on next is the monitor. I consider it to be as important as the chair,
if not more. This is alienware’s 38” widescreen curved
monitor. We used 34” display before but I find them
a little too narrow so that’s why I decided to go for 38” this time. There isn’t man
y options out there at this
size, luckily the alienware ticked all the boxes for me as well. IPS panel, 1ms response rate, supports g-sync
and not too curve because personally I don’t like curved screen, but my other half prefers
that. Since the back of the monitor is a see-through
glass, how the design looks at the back is very important. And I must say I absolutely love this, the
color scheme fits so nicely to my overall theme Connected to this screen is my new custom
built PC. Took me quite a
while to find the components
to match my aesthetics, good performance and not breaking the bank. Overall, I think this casing is absolutely
stunning, the black and white stormtrooper look matches perfectly with this monitor. I like RGB lighting but not too over, so you
can see I configured something rather simple. Here are all the parts I used for this build
if you are interested in doing something similar. If you are wondering what is this robot looking
thing beside, this is actually a fast ch
arger from a company call Gravastar. There are 2 USB-C and 1 USB-A ports. First of all, the color scheme matches my
theme, besides that I think it also fits very well to what I am doing - bots and all the
automation stuff. If you like these kind of sci-fi robotic looking
gadgets, you can check out their website, they have tons of such very interesting products. Next, my keyboard of choice is the Halo96
from a company call Nuphy. For mouse, I picked the Razer Basilisk V3
Pro. Keyboard and mouse a
re where your hands are
always in touch with, so to me they are peripherals that you need to feel good using them, very
important to keep you productive at the desk. I am not into building my own keyboard, so
I am looking for a prebuilt custom mechanical keyboard because that’s also what my other
half prefers, and with the numpad. Looking at the online reviews, and of course
the aesthetics design, I decided to try out the Halo96 from Nuphy. I will say it totally exceeds my expectations,
fantasti
c typing experience. The keyboard has a good amount of weight so
that it won’t move around at all, very solid built. The feel of the key caps, the color combination
and the font used, everything comes together so well. I go with tactile switches, the rose glacier I also like the RGB lighting along the sides
of the base, which matches quite nicely with the mouse as it also has a light underneath,
giving a nice lighting effect. The razer basilisk is probably the best hybrid
mouse out there, hybrid
means its good at both gaming and also for productivity work. After using the logitech MX master 3 for very
long, I am now very used to having a mouse with this fin at the side and you can see
it uses a different rubber material here giving very good grip control. Similarly, for the scroll wheel there are
2 modes that you can easily switch between. Good number of shortcut keys that you can
set, and again the aesthetics, it’s a very beautiful mouse matching with the black and
white theme I have
here. Both the keyboard and mouse is sitting on
a wool felt desk mat that I am selling on my own shopee store. You can also pair with a matching coaster
and the cup. Anyway I am selling them super cheap, I think
it’s good if you just want to give it a try on wool felt material whether you like
it or not, or you can always get one if you want to support my channel :) For audio, I am using the PS5 Pulse 3D headset
and sitting on this very nice black and sleek stand that you can find in my shopee s
tore
as well, just happen that the colour also matches my black and white theme. I am using the same headset for my PS5 gaming,
very used to wearing this already. Next, I want to introduce you to a device
that you don’t commonly find in a desk setup. This is a Network attached storage, NAS in
short. The one I have here is from Synology, one
of their entry model the DS423+. I need to figure out a solution as the space
required to store all my data has exploded, for my YouTube videos, movies and h
aving a
dog now taking more photos and videos, all these require more and more storage space
especially with 4K and HDR quality. I used to just want to keep it simple using
external SSD, but this has been very troublesome having to plug in plug out between my PC,
laptop and PS5. Having a NAS means I can easily access my
data anywhere in the house, or even outside. This model has a total of 4 harddisk slots,
I have populated 2 x 4TB so far. For this model, you can expand an additional
enclosure a
fter the 4 slots are all used up. Besides using it for normal file storage,
I also setup a Plex media server here to stream my own videos. Smart home users can use it to setup homebridge
for apple homekit or even home assistant as well Sitting on top of the NAS, I have this floating
light bulb here. By default, the bulb shouldn’t move at all
but because I have a ceiling fan blowing on top, the bulb will constantly rotate with
the wind, turns out to be very cool this way. But of course this light
is just for decoration,
my main source of lighting is going to come from this intelligent desk lamp from BenQ. Lighting has a big impact on how your setup
looks, it plays a huge role setting the mood right. In my home office, I went with BenQ screen
bar, but I feel that screen bar doesn’t fit nicely for a widescreen curve monitor,
so I decided to try out their desk lamp for this study room. I like that it has the accessories to go with
a clamp instead to keep the desk clean. I love the design a
nd just nice it has the
gold color option that is going to match so well with all my other lights in the living
room. To turn on or
off the lamp is by simply touching this metal ring on top, the knob here allows you to change
the brightness and temperature of the light manually, or you can let it automatically
adjust based on surroundings, that’s why it’s called an intelligent lamp. You can easily position the lamp anyway you
want and it will stay put there, very well built Besides that, of cour
se is my philips hue
light strip, you can easily set 3 color zones on their app this way. Now I kind of know why their products are
more expensive, their lights are really at a different level. I also place their Go Portable light hiding
behind the plant, having the light bounce off the wall this way, making the plant pop
off especially at night. So here at the window settee, this is an artificial
bamboo plant from ikea. I got a customized pot from taobao to fit
this space exactly, making sure i
can still use the power sockets. The cushion on top is also customized from
taobao. This is 3 inches thick, and together with
the height of the Ikea drawer, overall you got the nice full height window effect. Sitting here, chilling out by the window,
with the view outside, I will say I have absolutely no regrets doing this. And that’s all, after a few months of planning,
this is my study room makeover 2023. I will say this is going to be the final form
all the way till the day I move out of thi
s place super satisfied with how this turns
out. The only other thing I might add is just to
lay a carpet over the flooring. I don’t think I am able to do anymore desk
makeover videos for this house, I am thinking maybe I can collaborate with other
content creators, let me know if you have any suggestions who I should do a desk makeover
for, of course they must be based in Singapore. Thank you for staying right till the end,
see you in the next one.. BYE!
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