Creative paint storage solutions

Posted on June 15, 2017 by heatherlauraclarke

One of the best parts of my new laundry room / DIY studio is that I finally have ALL of my paint in one glorious, organized colour-coded spot!

Before the studio, when the room looked like hell, I was storing our large paint cans in the utility room (a.k.a. hellhole), my acrylic paints and oil paints in my office, and my “fancy” paints (Fusion Mineral Paint and Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint) in a closet under the basement stairs.

Now? It’s all here …

Remember what this wall used to look like???

Yikes.

After I freecycled the deep freeze, tore down the random shelves, and drywalled/primed the walls, I had a blank canvas with lots of potential.

I bought basic 8′ boards in a few different thicknesses (no need to have a wide shelf just for skinny acrylic paint bottles, I reasoned) based on the size of the paint containers.

Then I stained them (no need to make any cuts) and hung them with L-brackets — just like I did with these faux-floating shelves and photo ledges. I love L-brackets.

The very top shelf is for displaying canvases, but it can hold more paint if I need the room down the road.

For now, I have …

a shelf for acrylic bottles — which I only really use in projects with the kids because they’re cheap
a shelf for spray paint
a shelf for sample tubs and “proppers” (extra tiles I use to keep things off the ground while I’m painting them, and these genius plastic painting pyramids)
a shelf for my Fusion Mineral Paint and Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint
a shelf filled with recycled cans to store my gloves, sponge brushes and screws
a shelf for in-progress pieces (and large can overflow)
a shelf for storing and charging my Ryobi batteries
a shelf for stain and small cans of paint (and the tinfoil I use sometimes while painting)
a shelf that rests on the floor for most of the large paint cans (and my Ryobi jigsaw and circular saw, so I don’t have to worry about them falling onto the floor)

Looking at these shelves just FILLS me with excitement for new projects!

I always have a bunch of blank canvases lying around, and I used to shove them in the closet of my office. But sometimes they’d get ripped by something heavy falling onto them, and it was SO frustrating.

Now I store them on the wall of the studio on these plastic rain gutters — yup, the ones we used as bookshelves and took out of C’s room when we redecorated and built her loft bed and makeup table.

My paint brushes used to be stored in the closet under the basement stairs, and now I have them right where I can see them.

I just stained two lengths of 2×2 board and drilled them into the wall, and then added a bunch of screws to hang the brushes on. (Two different thicknesses, because the original screws I used were too big to fit through the holes of some of the brushes.)

The brushes are now directly above the gorgeous new laundry sink from Kent, so I can wash them out and just hang them to fully dry.

I used to keep my good arcrylic paints and my oil paints in plastic tubs in my office closet, and it was fine. They didn’t get damaged, BUT it was hard to see all of the colours.

So I took a piece of plywood, trimmed it to size with my jigsaw, painted it a light grey (Fusion Mineral Paint’s “Putty”) and used tiny screws to add a ton of binder clips — these ones from Staples.

They were perfect for pinching the ends of the paint tubes.

I filled one whole board with my Liquitex acrylics and ran out of room, so I had to make a second board.

The second board holds the acrylic overflow and any special mediums, plus my oil paints.

I just leaned both boards up against the (newly-painted) oil tank, and they have yet to fall over. They make it much easier to paint because I can see all of the colours at once, and they’re just pretty to look at, too.

Is there anything more soothing than colours arranged in rainbow order?

(Like my thread next-door in the office?)

(And my ribbon and embroidery thread?)

Ahhhhh …

Category: DIY, House of Dreams, Organization

2 Comments on “Creative paint storage solutions”

Gina aka East Coast Mommy
June 15, 2017

So organized! I love it!

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Jennifer MacGillivary
June 15, 2017

wow, I knew you were insanely crafty, but I'm impressed that you have this much stuff and this level of supply storage and organization

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I’m Heather Laura Clarke. I’m writer living in beautiful Nova Scotia, I have a 11-year-old son and a nine-year-old daughter, I married my high school sweetheart, and this is the story of my handmade life.

I have depression and anxiety, and I fight like hell every day to keep it from taking over my life. Making things isn’t just a hobby — it’s part of what keeps me alive.

Whether I’m writing novels, decorating a room, busting out my power tools to build furniture, getting muddy in the pottery studio, sewing clothes for my kids, or cross-stitching a swear word, I’m all about using my creativity to craft a life I love.

I’ve been writing this blog since 2009, so if you dig deep into the archives, you’ll meet a bright-eyed 25-year-old newlywed who was basically obsessed with having kids, buying a cozy house, and supporting herself full-time as a writer. (Spoiler alert: she got exactly what she wanted.)