First the hobby desk. There's been a significant change - we moved to Austin, Texas during the summer of 2016 and the new house actually has a formal office - so excited, I'm out of the spare room in the basement and actually in a very spacious den. I went to IKEA and purchased three tables that I use in an L shaped formation - one table for hobby, the corner table for my personal computer, and the third leg I use for my work laptop and spreading out my office work when I need to work from home.
I also re-purposed an IKEA glass enclosed shelving unit that holds all my completed models (it used to be in my oldest son's room long ago). Works great for models. I'd like to add more glass shelves but unfortunately, IKEA doesn't produce this unit anymore. I added a small battery operated led light I picked up from Home Depot and mounted that on the top of the unit which is a nice effect if I'm showing off models.
For paints, I came across Dr. Faust Youtube video of how he re-organized his painting desk about six months ago and he utilized acrylic racking designed for nail polish. Absolutely brilliant. I did some measurements and while I didn't order the exact same unit, I utilized the same idea and picked up a couple of CQ Acrylics 5 layer rack from Amazon which fit my desk space better. Word of warning, I ordered two for myself and another one later for my son - all three came cracked or chipped in some way from shipping. Nothing a bit of glue couldn't fix, but annoying none the less. They hold Vallejo, Reaper, and Games Workshop paints. Each row holds 16 bottles of Vallejo or Reaper for a total of 80 bottles of paint. Not sure on the GW - I only have an old pot of red ink, a wash of devlan mud, and a pot of liquid green stuff (which in my opinion is the best "paint" GW has ever produced). As they're a bit wider, I'd guess you'd get a total of 60.
As to those wall shelves I had hanging above my previous desk.... I have enough room in the new space to fit a couple of IKEA's billy bookcases and have all my rpg books, and "to be painted" models. Those bookcases work out really well. I went back to IKEA and bought a couple of extra shelves as miniatures don't need the full height of books/magazines.
And now to my newest find... primer for Reaper's bones miniatures. I recently went to the 2017 Reapercon for the first time. Reapercon is hosted in a suburb of Dallas near the airport and as that's an easy 3 hour drive for me, I was able to finally do something I've been wanting to do for a very long time. At Reapercon they had an awesome swag bag full of miniatures, paints, and other goodies from Reaper and various vendors at the convention. One of the goodies in the bag was a bottle of Stynylrez primer sample (in green color) from Badger Air-Brush Co. As a side note, I was able to see a close-up demo of airbrushing minis and I came so close to going home with the con special package from Badger - maybe next year - so cool. Back to the primer... I'm guessing that it's their in-house name or they're third partying the primer; either way, the primer is fantastic as a brush-on for the bones miniatures.
I know, I know... supposedly you don't need to primer bones. I'll disagree with that statement. Bones miniatures need a solid coat of something else the first layer will be blotchy and later layers will scratch off paint to the bone. When bones first came out (and this is before anything official was published by Reaper) I tried to use the standard spray paint primer - it eats into the pvc and creates a tacky surface that never dries - those first kobolds are still tacky several years later. Since then, I've been pretty successful using Vallejo's black with a large brush and just the right amount of water - not enough and it's too thick - too much and it doesn't stick to the miniature. With the Stynylrez well shaken I can dip my large brush directly into the bottle and paint straight onto the bones miniature. It sticks well to the mini and provides a great surface for both the Vallejo and the Reaper paints.
I did a quick Google search and Amazon has a large bottle of grey, white, and black colored Stynylrez primers. Other hobby sites have smaller bottles and various color selections. I will definitely be purchasing more in the future once this bottle is empty and hopefully that future includes an air-brush.
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