Redesigning the home studio #1

When can music get you all hot and bothered?
When you’re a musician who’s trying to re-design a home studio.
I spent the last hour crawling under my computer table, trying to dislodge some wooden panels which are preventing me from accessing the power point on my wall. In vain.
It’s a long story. How it happened, simply, was that I initially had a lot of wires lying or dangling about in the studio:

1. 2-3 microphone wires
2. 3 power cables for my 2 KORG keyboards amd KORG hard disk recorder
3. 1 power cable for my Mac
4. 1 power cable for my pre-amp, which also has a disgustingly huge adapter
5. Various audio cables connecting to my pre-amp and my Mac
6. iPod cables, card reader cable,
7. Two pedal cables for my KORG keyboards
8. Two turtledoves
9. A partridge in a pear tree (just testing to see if you’re still awake)

To solve the messy mass of wires, Mum (the interior design expert) drew up a neat-looking low panel to contain all the wires. It would run across one wall but would be segmented, with flip-top lids on each segment. This ensured that at any point we could access the bundle of wires within the panel by opening a lid. We left the design plans to the carpenters while we were at work….
And that was our mistake as it resulted in a totally different panel being built.
It only covered a corner of the room, not the entire wall.
Instead of being a low panel, it was high. No idea why it had to be so high.
Instead of the cables being accessible by flip-top lids, there were no lids. Instead, a narrow slot was carved into the SIDE of the panels.
Tonight I realised that the slot was too narrow for my arm to get in, so I could not change the multi-plug adapter that was sealed into the panel. Neither could I fit my pre-amp’s huge adapter inside, until I yanked a corner of the panel out and gradually slid the adapter in via that extra gap.
But I could not completely remove the panel, because it seemed to be drilled to the wall.
Apparently one solution is to have a fake, raised floor with strategically located outlets for the wires to come out from. However that’s probably more expensive as the entire fake floor would need to built. Also, we have built-in furniture that already goes up to the ceiling, so we can’t have a fake floor.
So, wall wiring it has to be, and mighty hard work it will be.