My new maximum efficiency paint rack, designed by me.

[Gunbird]

As I will be moving into a smaller room very soon, I'm trying to be as efficient as possible with the amount of space that I will have. One of the problem points is, or was, the amount of space my paints took up on my desk, so a year ago I moved it into one of my cabinets.



Thats half a cabinet filled with 200 bottles of paint, with another +100 other paints of different brands stuck into boxes taking up again as much shelving space. Since I work (not for long though) for a company that builds and sells servers, I see a lot of slot in devices. Devices built for maximum efficiency in the least amount of space so they can cram more of them in a server rack. Well, I can do that too!

I went with the dimensions of my cabinet, looked at the bottles I use most (Vallejo) and the biggest in my collection (also Vallejo, Model Wash bottles) and looked at the width of these types of bottles. I added a mm for the narrow ones, and 2 mm's for the wider ones, plus the thickness of 2 sheets of 2mm MDF to give me the slimmest possible option. This, combined with the depth and the height of my available space gave me the dimensions for both type of serverracks. I mean paintracks. In comes Patrick from Pat's Laser Cuttings who takes my design and puts in into the computer, not only under budget and in time, but with a freebie rack for me as well that he put together just to test if all of his (and mine) calculations added up.

So now I have 11 racks that look like this from the side (gloss white paint will be added to tie it in with my cabinet, plus the adding of short codes to depict what type of paint is in  there and what number, Like Vallejo Model Colour German Orange would fall into the VMC 21-30 slot, something easily done with my label write).



Since I work with a note book that has all of the paint names and number in it for things I painted before, all I need to do is to take out the rack with the correct number and take out the correct paint and put the rack back. Each narrow rack holds 30 Vallejo dropper style bottles, each wide rack holds 21 Vallejo Model Wash or MiG AMMO Weathering bottles.



But no, I hear you say, now I don't have my paints in front of me on my desk anymore, free to grab them whenever I need them. Well, you are right, up to a point. Consider this, how often do you paint something completely new and do you have to grab pots of paint to try stuff out, and how many times do you just use a select few to paint an entire unit of the same or slighlty different men. If you do the latter, you see what I mean. If you do the first, then I think they can still be suitable for you as you have to get up and get the paints you think you need and sit back down again. Cause, you know, sitting down for prolonged times isn't healthy? It is actually good to get up every 30-60 minutes and move about? Due to my knee injury, I learned that the hard way (no, it is not from excessive hobby time but from a overenthusiastic Prius driver). Also a nice bonus, it frees up a ton of desk space. I actually plan to fill that, but much less deep as the painting racks ever where, with custom made storage units for my tools and specialist stuff that is easy to keep on hand like tool and die sets. When I move to the new room my monitor can move to another table as well, freeing up even more usable desk space.

But this isn't a sales pitch. This is just me wanting to show you my solution that my brain came up to my particular problem.

(In the end, the entire set up of 9 narrow and 2 wide plus 3 spare narrow sets me back 5 whole euros per unit. And the real cost of this new system? 5 euros total, as I got 1 for free and have sold the 2 old paintracks for 60 euro to fund this. Pretty happy with that. And if I ever need more, all I need to do is call Pat and ask to buy some more as he has the design stored on his pc)

[Marine0846]

Great idea.
Like how all the paint is in one place.

[Jabba]

Great idea, is that an Ikea Billy bookcase cabinet they are in?

[Gunbird]

Yes, made to be an exact fit of the Ikea Billy half width. For a section that has doorhinges on the side I can just replace the 2 wide ones with 2 narrow ones or leave out 1 narrow one.

[DELTADOG]

Both thumbs up! Great idea!

[Tactalvanic]

Now that is good organisation and ideas in action

I may need to coppy some of them in the future 

[fred]

Cool, so you have tripled your storage - if my quick calculations are right, going from about 100 paints, that are all visible, to 300 stored tidily in vertical shelves.

I have most of my paints in a couple of trays in front of me, and even with this storage end up with loads out on my painting table - I pretend these are there for easy access - mainly I'm just being lazy at putting them away.

I think this is a great idea, but you will have to be disciplined at putting the paints back!

[Gunbird]

Clean desk policy, same as at work, clear the desk when I leave work, clear and clean the desk each Friday. As the current hobbyroom is a complete and utter mess, desperately awaiting the transfer to the new room, that policy is dead in the water for my hobby room, but after the move, with everything sorted and boxed, I'll restart that. I have 1 warbases paint racks for 30-40? paintrack on my desk for my day to day needs with the basic paints I use all the time (black, white, flesh triad, base triad) and the rest will get put back on a weekly basis unless I'm painting a project and need certain paints, but as I will be focusing on scenery for some time to come, these are craft paints in big bottles.

Yup, from 100 to over 300 in the same area, with 3 extra spare trays for later that I need to assemble.

[pistolpete]

'a clean desk is the sign of a sick mind'

'if your desk is clean it means you don't have enough work'

[Gunbird]

If I can't even find a project I started last week, it means my desk is too full!

Beside, my OCD demands it. The way it is now is killing me every day.

[Thargor]

Great stuff Gunbird.

I tend to have lots of ongoing projects and to prevent painting inertia, I paint a unit from a project then switch to a unit from another project.  I clear the desk in between.  At the moment I'm busy with LPL teams, so I'm clearing down after 5 models.  My paints are stored in plastic carry cases from Homebase.

[PaintsByNumbers]

Your first rack takes up much more room than necessary.  Store them horizontally in cubbyholes and it only takes up about 4" depth from top to bottom.

Easier to remic if stored horizontally; the separation layer has a much larger surface area.

(btw Vallejo says to roll & squeeze, not shake)

[matthais-mouse]

I really like that, it would be right up my street for when I either go back down south or end up living on campus in Scalloway and only have a small space to use.

I must admit I prefer a tidy work space although it has been clutsy from time to time.

[Reed]

This is a great idea! I should get something like it, storing the paints in boxes ends up being a mess.

[SABOT]

Great work!