whoaa, this has sure turned left.
First, John, I didn't mean to step on anyone's toes. Sometimes in an effort to be clear and brief we often end up sounding harsh. I didn't mean to.
To summarize why I want to do it this way; I want to be able to use the windows from the driver's seat after the car is off but not drain the battery. This, BTW, is a common feature on cars, power windows will often work for some time after the key is off because a lot of people want to stop the car THEN roll up the windows. And unfortunately the autostop in our cars can be a little stupid sometimes, failing to kill the car, or restarting as the driver's foot comes off the brake. And I don't want to have to take care of the car after it's stopped, as much as possible it should be taking care of me.
It's not unusual for me not to use the car for weeks at a time. This way I don't have to put in any additional switches but, perhaps more importantly to me, I get to put that IMHO wildly idiotic "main" switch to good use, killing two birds with one, admittedly complex, stone. This may have more to do with my particular personality disorders than efficiency
but that's OK with me, it's what I want to do. To let you know how much I want to make that gigantic "main" switch do SOMETHING useful I will admit that even if I found out that the window controller were CMOS and drew 0 current so I could leave it on all the time (and that might be true, the door lock controller is hot all the time), I would STILL want to do it my way.
As for the difficulty, I'm not that concerned. Except for finding that screw I'm in pretty good shape. The steering wheel cover is already off, you don't have to remove the steering wheel, you can just loosen the 4 nuts. And I learned something useful doing that, you can shim those 4 studs to adjust the height of the steering wheel. I like a lower mounted steering wheel and now I have one. Last weekend I also took the driver's door panel off and did a wiring trick so that the driver's door key will both lock AND UNLOCK all the locks (passenger door and hatch), the lack of which has been annoying me since I got the car. I don't like to carry the remote, there's already too much junk in my pockets.
The weekend before last I fixed a stunningly weird problem with the EGR valve which had been throwing codes since I got the car earlier this year (along with half a dozen other codes, including the IMA which took a new battery pack under warranty). I took it out expecting to clean it but it was completely jammed. Coil resistance normal, not much carbon, wouldn't move the poppet no matter what. It turned out that it was bent! I disassembled it (thanks to Peter for his terrific post), straightned it out, internally lubricated it, rewired the coil to the terminal, put it back together, re-installed it, and viola, no codes. And, that weekend, I DID the rear wheel cutout concept Bigred floated. I know that's a matter of opinion too, most don't seem to like it, but I like it a lot better, and it's my car.
To summarize: I know what I want to do, I know why I want to do it, I even know almost entirely how to do it, I just wanted to know where the darned screw was. And I do have a sense of humor and I've got plenty of paint.
removing dashboard panel to access window controls
Also easy to remove. 
Pink......Just a reference to repainting a smoke damaged house. None of the team could believe the colour the lady chose, but that's what she wanted and that's what she got. 
