Custom Entertainment Centers in Jacksonville, FL

A freestanding piece is right if you rent or expect to move soon. Everything else favors built-in, and the wider the wall the bigger the gap: a 14 foot family room wall in a Bartram Park or Nocatee house has no furniture answer that does not look lost. If you want furniture rather than architecture, we build freestanding furniture grade cabinetry too.

Two numbers set the layout: the TV opening and the screen center height.

Televisions move in one direction. Build tight to the set you own and the replacement will not fit, so we go 4 to 6 inches wider and 4 taller.

Screen center height is where people err the other way. Seated eye level is 40 to 44 inches off the floor and the screen center wants to be near it, while over a fireplace it often lands at 60 inches, which is a sore neck in twenty minutes. Sit on your own couch, hold a tape at your eye, and build to that number.

A media cabinet base runs 18 to 20 inches deep, with 12 to 14 inches for flanking uppers.

Nobody covers this, and it causes problems owners never trace back to the cabinetry. A receiver under load puts out real heat, a console adds more, and sealing that into a closed box drives the temperature up until the unit throttles or dies early.

An open shelf with no back cools itself. Anything behind a door needs an intake low and an exhaust high, because one hole is not ventilation. We give a receiver 3 inches of clear air above it, meaning a 9 to 10 inch shelf opening rather than the 7 a spec sheet implies.

Solid doors need a vent grille and block infrared remotes, so plan on a repeater or a seeded glass front cabinet bay.

A real chase is the difference between clean and almost clean: a 3 to 4 inch route from the mount down behind the cabinetry to the equipment bay, so no cord crosses open wall.

In a wood framed wall that runs inside the stud bay. On a block wall, which is most exterior walls here and many interior walls in older Southside and Arlington houses, you cannot fish anything, so we build the chase into the cabinetry: a furred cavity behind the back panel or a hollow pilaster between sections.

Plan power at the same time: an outlet behind the television, one in the equipment bay, one at the soundbar shelf. Adding those later means cutting finished work. We loop four to six feet of slack HDMI so a component can be pulled forward, and run a spare pull string down the chase.

A subwoofer wants hiding but not muffling, so it gets an open base bay with no back and a grille cloth front.

The finish decision is about how much the cabinetry should disappear. Painted cabinetry matching your trim reads as architecture and lets the television be the only dark thing on the wall. Stained wood does the opposite.

• Painted shaker doors in your existing trim color, the most requested here
• Slab doors in flat paint or rift white oak for a modern Nocatee build
• Shaker style cabinets in a deeper color to anchor a large wall

Soft close hinges and full extension glides belong in the base run. For the surface around the cabinetry, look at the wood accent wall options rather than pushing texture onto the doors.

Two Jacksonville specifics show up on most jobs.

The first is block. If your living room shares a wall with outside, it is probably CBS block with furring and drywall over it. A television bracket anchors into the block with sleeve anchors in the solid web, not into furring, and a floating cabinet needs its ledger anchored the same way.

The second is fire. If a firebox or electric insert is in the plan, the cabinetry holds the appliance clearances and the insert gets a vented cavity, covered on the electric fireplace feature wall page.

An entertainment wall unit run to the ceiling makes a room look taller, but only if the crown is right, so we carry crown molding across the top into the room's existing crown. In older Riverside and Avondale rooms we scribe every vertical and build the face frame square even when the room is not.

1. We measure the wall and sit on your couch to set screen height
2. We confirm wall construction, outlets and every component going in
3. You get a layout with opening sizes, venting plan, chase route and a price
4. Optional 3D rendering before we build
5. Cabinetry built and finished in our shop
6. Install, scribe, anchor, run the chase, set the mount, fit crown
7. Cables dressed, doors adjusted, walkthrough

Most builds run two to four days.

Three things drive it: linear footage, the ratio of drawers and doors to open shelving, and whether the unit runs to the ceiling with crown. Venting, lighting and glass doors each add a modest amount. These are typical Jacksonville ranges, and a real number takes measuring your wall.