Some days ago, Rev shared his hobby setup, so here I am with an idea maybe suitable for your own workspace? Last weekend I did a little IKEA hack to “tame” my ever growing collection of paints. With the help of plastic profiles I bought at a local building centre, I turned my IKEA drawer unit into a neatly organised paint storage. Find out more in this tutorial.

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Underneath my desk I got this “Helmer” drawer unit from ikea. It’s made from hard-wearing metal, has castors, fits right under a regular (IKEA) desk and is affordable, which makes it a solid contender for any hobby area. It comes in silver, white or red (sadly not in black).

This is what my drawers looked like before. I had two drawers full of paints, and while they were roughly sorted into, finding a certain paint pot was sometimes difficult.

After some planning, I headed to a local building centre and after a while I found something suitable: plastic profiles, made from the same material as regular plasticard. These were available in different sizes and shapes, I got those L-shaped ones which are 35 mm wide, 20 mm high, 1 m long, with a thickness of 1,5 mm. 35 mm width is perfect for GW pots. Of course, those slimmer and longer dropper bottles will have more play, so make sure the height is at least 20 mm or else the bottles will fall over too easily when you open the drawer.

As the profiles were made of regular plasticard material, it was pretty easy cutting them to size with regular hobby tools. For the drawers of my Helmer unit I cut the profiles in 23 cm long pieces. To do this, I sawed the shorter 20 mm long side (marked red) with my Gale Force 9 bone saw down to the bottom. Then I used a ruler and a hobby knife to slit the base of the profile (marked blue). Once slit, you can break off your piece easily. Finally I used a hobby knife and a hobby file to neaten up the edges.

Once the pieces are ready, I attached two stripes of double-faced adhesive tape and put in the profiles. I managed to fit 9 rows in a single drawer with a bit more space in the back for wider pots and tools. Of course the paints take up more space now so I needed a third drawer, but my over 200 paint pots are well organised and there is still room for more.

What do you think of this “Ikea hack”? Of course you could adapt this tutorial for other drawers… or do you’ve got other useful workspace ideas to share?

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