Thanks for all the nice feedback. Before anyone gets too envious, it's not a real timber-frame house -- that would have cost a lot more than I could afford -- but rather a conventional stick-built house with two wood-wrapped steel beams, 4x12 timbers to support the loft, and a 60-foot LVL ridge beam (which I think is a very cool idea) holding the roof up. I got lucky in that the guys on the framing team had been reading about timber framing for a couple of years and were looking for a place to try out what they had learned so the carport and decorative timber worked out far better than I had expected. Dennis (Tharkun) was also a huge help when I was making decisions about how to finish the house, drawing on his years in the construction business.
I had to make some compromises in order to afford the house, with the TV being only the most obvious one. I would like to replace it in the future if the toy budget ever recharges but my short term strategy of "sitting really close to the screen" has worked for me so far. My father was quite content using miniature binoculars to see text on his TV until we convinced him to upgrade to a 32" Sony so I guess we must share the "frugal" gene
That all said, I would prefer to start fresh and not use soup cans in the new setup. Plan A was to use FMBs on the angled walls (I already have 4 sets of speaker wires run to outlet boxes in approximately the right spots) but I don't think that is going to work because the two angled side walls are not the same length. The one on the left is very short while the one on the right is much longer so one of the surrounds would need to be in front of the seating position even with the 27" TV.
I have a pathological aversion to buying expensive speaker stands so have not jumped to the new FMS-QS, but those may end up being the best solution. In the short term I am looking through the pantry for equal-sized (stackable) cans and have enough to reach up about 2-1/2 feet already
