DIYing the Wall in the Sound House Office

‘Do it yourself’ is all the rage these days!

DIY for short!

This time, as the title suggests, I would like to do a DIY project on a wall in one of the rooms at Sound House!

As you may know, Sound House offers a wide variety of audio equipment, lighting, and musical instruments.
Among them, the number of wind instruments we handle has been increasing in recent years.
We have a room where wind instruments are inspected, adjusted, and repaired before shipping them out.
A wide variety of tools are used for adjustment and repair, and I would like to install perforated boards on the walls to provide storage space for tools and improve work efficiency.

■ What is a perforated board?

Perforated board is a board with holes evenly spaced like this.

You may have seen them on the walls of music rooms. In fact, perforated boards are often used to adjust acoustics due to their effectiveness as a sound absorbing material. It is also often used for store walls in the city, where hooks and boards are attached to place products or decorate for displays.
They are also often used in factories and workshops to organize tools by attaching hooks and boards. In this case, I will install them for this purpose.

■ Checking the installation location

Before installation, it is necessary to check the condition of the surface to be installed.
What kind of material is the wall made of, where is the base material located, and will there be any problems with electrical wiring interference?
I will start by checking the left side of the image.

The wall material is gypsum board. Gypsum board is a common wall material for construction. It is a noncombustible material with a thickness of at least 12 mm, so fireproof performance is not a problem.
Although fireproof performance is not a problem, screws cannot be driven directly into this material. To fix the plasterboard in place, screws must be driven into the base material that is placed behind the plasterboard, or a plasterboard anchor, an anchor that allows screws to be driven into the plasterboard, must be inserted.
I checked the installation locations and found only two places where I could drive the screws directly into the base material, so I will install the other locations after inserting anchors.

■ Plasterboard Anchor Installation

Use this plasterboard anchor.

Simply drill a 3mm hole at the tip of the mounting position and turn it with a screwdriver.

The anchor could be installed like this.

■ Perforated board installation

Now, let's install the main part, the perforated board.
If you install the perforated board directly on the wall, you will not be able to put hooks in the holes, so I will insert spacers so that there will be a gap between the wall and the perforated board.

The first side is completed.

The other side of the wall will be installed in the same manner.

This completes the double-sided installation.

■ Summary

This was my first time entering the wind instrument room, as I usually work in a different room where I mainly repair lighting and sound equipment. I was inspired as a technician when I saw the process of adjusting and repairing wind instruments on the opposite side of the room from where I was installing them.
They say that good work starts from a good desk, and I was happy to be able to play a part in this process and, by extension, create a positive impact on the products delivered to our customers.