Lately I've been giving my hobby area a considerable re-working - since we bought a house, I have a space in the basement, but it's also being used for storage until we get around to finishing it, and it's a mess. Previously, I had been using the P3 Paint Bag for my most-commonly-used paints & tools - it was nice because it zipped to my Warmachine bag, so I could grab the whole thing & head out to a friend's house to build & paint some models without trying to throw a bunch of stuff in a shoebox or something. The downsides were that 1.) it made my bag a lot bulkier & heavier; 2.) it didn't even hold the majority of my paint collection - I still had two P.A.C.K. 216's with over 150 bottles of paint that I'd have to grab if I thought I needed more than the basics; and 3.) I recently changed shifts at work, and it looks like I'll eventually be free to do a lot more painting at home as opposed to on-the-go, so the P3 bag didn't make as much sense anymore. I started looking for solutions to have all my paints available at my desk, and after searching the blogs & forums I came across the Paintier 80 Carrousel Organizer:
This had fairly good reviews, so I figured I'd give it a shot - I new I'd need at least two to hold all my paints, but I thought I'd order just one at first to see how it would work out. You can order it directly through their website, but I was able to find them a bit cheaper on both Amazon & eBay. If you want a smaller version, they also offer a 40-slot version for a bit less.
I was a little worried about it being plastic - after it arrived, I removed all the parts from the box:
I wasn't worried about how sturdy it was after seeing the parts - the plastic is thick & sturdy. (Think of the plastic used in those heavy five-gallon industrial buckets, and you're not far off). The "lazy susan" attached to the bottom tray is steel and obviously heavy-duty. It also came with bolts of various lengths for assembly, top cap assembly, pastic tubing for the center column, and instructions.
There are four different configurations you can choose to assemble - since I have many different paints from GW, Reaper, Vallejo, PW, Badger, Tamiya, etc., and will be using the Paintier to also store miscellaneous bottles, of glue, weathering powders, fixatives etc., I just picked the configuration that would give me the most space between each shelf - the instructions aren't terribly helpful (you can't really tell which length bolt or piece of tubing to use from the simple drawings), with a bit of fidgeting it wasn't too hard to figure out.
Next, I started loading up all my paints:
Overall, it worked great:
In fact, it worked so well, I went ahead and ordered another:
(I actually screwed up here, I should have put the dropper bottles in the Paintier that I assembled in the taller configuration. Oh well - I'm fairly sure that as I live with these far a while, they'll get rearranged many times).
...overall, a good solution for organizing your paints. It's a bit pricey, but holds a ton of paint, and is surprisingly sturdy (I doubt you could even accidentally break it, I think you'd have to intentionally smash it into a concrete floor to crack it). It does take up a lot of room, so if you're hobby area is a small student-sized desk or something, it might not be for you - but if you've got the space and are looking for a way to organize your stuff, it's a good choice.
