Any painter cares about his/her paintings. It's a pity when the thing is spoiled due to incorrect storage.

When there is no separate workshop, you try to find a storage space at home. It is easy to keep small handmade things. But the paintings on canvas take a lot of space. I kept them as many people in the wardrobe. But I was not satisfied with it as the paintings were close to each other and the paint layer (even through the film) could be damaged.

I found a great place in the room: a wall between the sofa and the balcony. Of course, the proximity of the balcony is not the best, but I will cover the paintings with film or cloth. The main thing is that the heating pipes should not be nearby.

So, I needed a shelf, wardrobe, or stacks.

The shelf is used for the following:

1) for paintings to have distance between each of them;

2) to use efficient space to place there as many paintings as possible;

3) a suitable size.

Being lazy bones, I began to look for ready-made options. I found some, but they were too expensive.

1) The companies, offerring commercial equipment, sell transparent acrylic dividers for shelves. They can be found in any supermarket. They can be fixed by mount attachment or adhesive tape, or special tires on the sides of the shelf. The advantages are the following: thin, light, you can stick a lot of them.

2) To make a good stack (for the office or warehouse), metal dividers are sold. They are more durable, but require specially perforated shelves.

There are also vertical tubes, perpendicular to the plane of the shelf. Or here is an option in the form of a metal plate:

Perforated stacks are convenient because the height of the shelf can be adjusted (for pictures of different sizes).

3) You can buy a sheet of corrugated board (fences are made with it). But you should find one with appropriate distance. The task is to get something like this.

However, the width of the space is used irrationally.

4) Craftsmen hammer the stack with shelves and dividers together made of wood.

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It all looks good but requires either money or a handy man. I have chose another option. You`ll need an ordinary shelf. It is necessary to find a ready-made or make yourself a pair of combs with a suitable step (like in the picture):

Then, you need to attach one of them to the shelf itself, and the other at the top level of the paintings.

In a few days, an idea came to my mind. I needed the following:

the shelf itself — made out of chipboard, 2 cm thick, 1 meter long, 40 cm wide (the smallest canvas I use is 40x40 cm),

a pair of brackets for the shelf, a wooden stick 1 meter long, sandpaper, ruler, pencil, brush (to remove sawdust), screwdriver,

the following accessories: I chose screws with hidden hats 9 cm long (screws will not spoil the frame wood), nuts and washers to them,

suitable dowels and screws (to fix the shelf to the brackets and the brackets to the wall).

I chose 4 cm distance between the dividers. Not to perforate the shelf itself so often, I decided to use wooden chapicuy (pin). Later, it turned out to be convenient, it is necessary to take something longer.

So, I measured and drilled holes in the shelf (up to half of the depth), filled with PVA glue, inserted pins in two rows.

In a wooden rack, I measured the same distance and drilled the holes (through). I put the screws inside, screwed on each of them a washer and a nut. A screwdriver is of a great help here.

Let us try to fix the construction to the wall.

The cornice was an obstacle, so I had to move the shelf to the left from the wall.

As for the comb, I decided to leave it as it was. At fisrt, I thought to attach it at a distance of 40 cm from the shelf for the picture to be on the screws of the upper beam of the frame. But I hung it 7 cm below.

The shelf itself can be moved 2 cm from the wall, so that the edges of the paintings do not "hang". But it does not matter.

The result was the following:

Remove the dust and place the paintings:

You may place there paintings of 40x40 cm, 40x50 cm sizes (vertically, as in the photo), or 40x60 cm (but horizontally). It may store 24 paintings.

If you make several shelves like that and place one under another, you`ll have a stack. The disadvantage of it is that the shelf height is fixed. The advantage of it is the simplicity, reliability and low cost.

The only thing you`ll need to do is cover the work from dust.

How do you keep your paintings?