You are the best painter in your town :) Fair play.

"a larger bucket that you could directly dip the roller into it and just use the tray to roll off the excess" This grid system aims to do that, I think. I have seen painters pour off a bit of paint from the full tub into a kettle to make space and then drop the grid into the tub of paint.



There's no perfect set up, though. As you can see this painter will have bits dropping in their paint supply because the full tub is constantly open to the air.

Using kettles, as your paint thickens up you have to decide whether to add a conditioner or a drop of water or just battle on.