The Workroom; The Final Piece (well pieces)

Some where in here there is a post about my workroom. At that point it was pretty darn close to be finished. What was missing were the paint racks and tool drawers that I wanted. I had spent some time searching around and quite frankly as far as tool drawers or racks there is not much out there, at least that appeals to me. I looked at the racks and drawers from Back 2 Base-ix a couple of times, even put together an order and then stopped when I got to the shipping. Back 2 Base-ix is based in Australia and the shipping chargers are really high. I kept looking and kept going back so I decided to make an order even with the shipping charges.

I ordered two of the inner corner paint rack (for Vallejos and Reapers), 2 of the small tidy drawers, 1 center paint rack with two drawers and the larger version of the tidy drawers. They arrived today and I immediately went into construction mode. The word tidy keeps throwing me, I'm not sure if its normal usage in Australia or they are just using it as a descriptor. They won't be "tidy" for long when I start putting things in them.

Although I would have preferred some printed instructions, their online videos are pretty good, although I did pause frequently to catch up. I had the sequence down pat after the first couple of builds and I think I built all 6 components in about 4 hours. Pretty good time I think and I like the engineering that went into these. My only complaint is that the drawers are smaller than I thought they would be and I'm not sure they will actually hold what I want them to hold. That's on me since I didn't translate mm to inches very well. However, the small tidy drawer could stand to be a little bigger.

This is what I ordered (these are the mdf versions and there are no stock numbers)
The Rack: The Drawer Tidy (x2)
The Rack: The Bigger Drawer Tidy
The Rack: 90 degree Internal Corner
The Rack: Straight Section, large, paints (vallejo/reaper) & 2 drawer unit.

I'm still waffling if they are worth the price, mostly because of that huge shipping charge which added another $87 to the price of a $200 order. I think the paint racks are going to be fine, although the drawers in the center paint rack unit are really small and might hold my small files, they will certainly hold bits, so maybe bits drawers is what they will become. So the drawers are all smaller than I expected but the various units still take up a fair amount of space on my workbench!

Here are some pictures of the units and how they are arranged on my desk.

The 90 degree internal corner paint rack

The Small Tidy Drawer

The Large Paint Rack with drawers

The Large Tidy Drawers

How it all fits on the workbench

The Workroom

I have been quite on the posting front because another project was occupying my attention. I have spent time over the last few months and a lot this last week taking down my old darkroom and converting it into a proper painting space. There is still some stuff to do and clean up but it is to the point were I can start painting in it. The under shelf lights are some wicked expensive LED lights, but they are very bright and run very cool and will last a long time.. Overhead are two sets of 4' fluorescent lights and of course I can pull out all kinds of extra light if I want. The workbench top is a hollow core door so there is plenty of space to work on. The airbrush station is sitting on its own table. the compressor sits underneath and I can add a lot more light if I need to. Its vented out the back and up into the crawl space.

I have managed to fill all this space up and I still haven't managed to get everything into it. I'll have to really work at getting the stuff underneath cleaned up for more miniature and game storage space.

So really pictures say it all.

Airbrush Station with Reference Books and Games Above

Reference and Rule books

 Old Space Hulk Marines and ...Books!

 Mostly Rulebooks here

 Some Seriously old gaming books

Empty Space! How did that happen?

 Osprey Books

 Modeling Books

 Reference Books, who would have thought

 The Traveller Section. This may have to get moved else where so free up mini storage space

 A few clamps

 And behind the workbench more shelves!

The workroom (part 1)

Tonight I managed to use the last of my Christmas money to pick up the shelves and brackets to finish off my workroom in the basement. This used to be my darkroom so the arrangement of power is a bit funky and the light switch is higher than normal so that I wouldn't accidentally turn it on while processing film. It then became a mini library but that didn't work out very well either. I have cleared out the bookcases (just pine ones I knocked together) and put them out in the main basement. The space will be small but not terribly cramped and I should be able to keep all my reference material close at hand and still have storage space for kits, paints and tools. I need to put up the lights before I can really show it off, but getting it finished will be the key to having a productive year for both painting miniatures and working on the railroad.