Thanks for the comments! Oh, and I’m in Ontario so that probably doesn’t help. :)

Thankfully this is a small builder basically building his own development two houses at a time, and he’s quite open to significant changes. That does make many things possible, but not necessarily cheap or advisable.

After spending decades with a 4.0/4.1 setup I’m a pretty big fan of center channels for vocal imaging - but of course a crappy center isn’t going to make me happy either.

For some reason bookshelf speakers hadn’t come to mind - probably because I’m like there’s no way the wife will allow some big black boxes there, but they do come in white and wood tones, which could be acceptable. I’ll have to float that idea since it would keep the mantle area looking cleaner.