Paint Rack

My old paint holder worked fine right up until my paint bottle collection outgrew it, at which point it was just eating desk space that could be used for something more useful — like a bowl of cheese balls. So I built a wall-mounted replacement instead of just buying a bigger holder, because apparently that’s the default response to a storage problem in this house.

It’s a simple build on paper: a Baltic birch panel full of holes for the bottles, walnut sides and top, mounted with a French cleat. In practice, it turned out to be a lot more annoying than it looked. The hole saw I had was almost exactly the same diameter as the paint bottles, which sounds close enough right up until you actually try sliding a bottle in and get real resistance instead. Every single hole — all of them — had to be hand-sanded oversized afterward, using sandpaper glued to a dowel chucked in a drill, because apparently that counts as a real tool if you’re desperate enough.

The oversized holes turned out to matter for more than just fit, though: with a bit of extra gap between the front and back panels, gravity tilts each bottle slightly instead of letting it sit bolt upright, and that tilt is what actually locks it in place — a snug, perfectly vertical hole would have let bottles slide straight back out. A happy accident that only exists because the first attempt at hole sizing failed.

It’s on the wall now, holding way more paint than the old one ever could, with brushes tucked into angled holes drilled in the walnut sides and a small lip on top for glue and whatever else needs a temporary home. Worth the hassle — but if I ever build a second one, I’m buying the correctly sized hole saw first.