New desk and keyboard

A year or so ago I got myself a chest of drawers from on Costco. I didn’t write much about it, but I assembled it with my sister and had quite a lot of fun doing it—and not enough cleaning up.

Ever since then, I have had the itch to get some more new furniture and keep making my room look a little bit more mine.

Recently, my parents went to a pretty big city in my state, and during their visit, they went into an IKEA store. I have heard of IKEA in the past, but I hadn’t really considered them. But since my parents were there already, I asked them to look for something for me!

They didn’t dissapoint.

They sent me some píctures, and I chose a couple of things.

A cabinet, to store some things I had on some old boxes, and a new desk, for my computer!

New desk - IKEA HAUGA Desk

My old desk, was one of the old style ones from the 2000s or so, with a slide-out section for the keyboard and a shelf above the monitor, as well as sections under it for the machine itself and whatever other things you may want to place there. My parents got it out of nowhere during my early years at university, when I only had an old desktop computer. It worked fine, if a bit wobbly, since the whole thing was just plywood. One of the worst mistakes done to it, was placing a printer on the top shelf, which weighed quite a lot. In the end, it was even more wobbly, and I ended up removing the top shelf section and using it like that, more stable as long as you didn’t push it from the sides.

Enough backstory. I bought those two things from IKEA, first we assembled the cabinet, which took the most time, and replaced a modular metal wire storage rack—which I passed down to my sister. The next day we assembled the desk, pretty easy and painless to me.

I won’t mention the cabinet much, it is what it is—an IKEA BRIMNES cabinet. Here’s a picture of it though, although it’s a bit of a mess inside, like all cabinets are.

The desk is also just a desk, although it is still the space I will use the most from now on. As it houses my computer, my gateway to the internet, the place where I’ll write, read and interface with the world from the comfort of my bedroom.

The dimensions are 100x45 cm, slightly less usable suface, because of the rails on the sides, but still plenty for me. I would have liked a bit more depth, but it’s good enough.

The shelf under it is a bit meh, it’s only 7cm high, and what looks like a “drawer” in the photo, is actually just a sliding door. That means that things stored all they way in are hard to reach. I put some card games and notebooks, and my handhelds when I’m not using them too. Not much space for anything else.

The space on top I decorated with a mousepad, a pencil holder, a lamp for aesthetics and some other peripherals.

To make space for the keyboard, I used the rail on the back to raise my laptop. I initially bought a stand for it but I think this works better, since it can get even further to the back, which allows more space for my palms to rest.

I had heard some things about IKEA, both good and bad, but in my experience both the desk and the cabinet were quite easy to build with the help of my sister. She’s really into LEGOs so it was like the adult version of that. I had a nice time as well, nothing that complicated happened, but I wonder how we would fare building something bigger later on. For now, this is good enough.

New keyboard - Machenike K500

I wasn’t really planning on buying a new keyboard, I have never been interested on mechanical keyboards before, and while my desk is much bigger than my previous one, I didn’t really think I had the space for it anyway.

However, I made the mistake of just looking it up, and I saw one for very cheap, and with colors I really liked, so I had no choice but to cave in and get it anyway.

The Machenike K500 is a budget keyboard, plastic body and all. Honestly, I couldn’t care less. I have zero experience in this little world and I don’t know if I really want to get into it any further.

Regardless, it just arrived a few hours ago as of the writing of this piece, and this is the first chunk of text written on it.

They keyboard feels nice to me, I don’t know about lube, or sensitivity, or if the sound it makes is super satisfying. It has a numpad and full arrow keys, and that’s really all I needed. The only key I really miss right now is the Delete key, but I will survive.

The keyboard is also “hot swap” capable, it comes with some Cherry MX Red clones and RGB too. I set it up so only the keys I press light up in white, nothing too fancy. It has some software to setup profiles or customize things further, but it’s proprietary and I don’t really care much.

The layout I got is the standard Latin Spanish one, with an ñ and some different key placements, which are the same as my laptop’s, so I’m used to it. The font is more standard than what I saw on reviews with the US layout, with which was a bit too gamer for my taste. My first impressions are quite positive, I am satisfied with my purchase so far.

Final thoughts

Getting to really customize my space how I want is something that I couldn’t really afford when I was a student, it’s one of those nice adult things I get to do with my own money and it’s honestly kind of awesome.

The keyboard I got feels good so far, I’ve never really had issues with thin laptop keyabords, I actually kind of liked them—I admit that I barely used other keyboards but the cheap ones at school. I am liking the feel it has while typing all of this. I hope I don’t get the itch to really get into mechanical keyboards, it’s too expensive, and scary—send help.

In the end, I am really happy with how everything turned out! From assemtly to decorating everything, I had a nice time.

This is day 71 of #100DaysToOffload